Read 2026-10-04
htop-dev/htop: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in htop-dev/htop's code and history at bb3ee0a: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | adequate |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | not assessable |
| Security & Reliability Posture | not assessable |
| Observability & Operations | not assessable |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
COPYING: Relicensed: GPL-2.0 → GPL-with-exception (2010-02-24) → GPL-2.0 (2021-08-26)AGENTS.md:80: states a policy on AI-generated contributions
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
stronglinux/LinuxProcessTable.c is 1,875 lines, 23× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 81 lines. 7 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 1,875. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
linux/LinuxProcessTable.c:1 — 1,875 lines (23× median) |
CRT.c:1 — 1,539 lines (19× median) |
Settings.c:1 — 1,204 lines (14× median) |
linux/Platform.c:1 — 1,180 lines (14× median) |
Process.c:1 — 1,152 lines (14× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate1 test files against 288 source files (0.3%). This does not measure whether the tests are good, only whether enough of them exist for the codebase to be changed safely by someone who did not write it — which is exactly the situation after an acquisition.
| 1 test files / 288 source files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
not assessableNot rated: only 9 of 19 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Security & Reliability Posture
not assessableThe build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate5 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.
.github/workflows/ci.yml:296 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/ci.yml:320 — action pinned by tag |
Relicensed: GPL-2.0 → GPL-with-exception (2010-02-24) → GPL-2.0 (2021-08-26)
adequateThe root licence changed 2 time(s). Code taken under earlier terms stays under them; check which terms any fork or customer relied on.
3 advisories against this project in the last 24 months
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-05-18. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 3 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 3.5.3. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. The record is incomplete: NVD: 1 record names htop with nothing tying it to this repository (CVE-2008-5076).
| 2026-05-18: GHSA-q64m-h5hc-c4qq (moderate): Terminal escape sequence injection via process argv[0] in InfoScreen_drawTitled() (mvaddstr) |
| 2026-05-18: GHSA-6f53-xw2h-ww59 (low): Stack buffer underflow in InfoScreen_drawTitled() when terminal width is 2 columns or fewer |
| 2026-05-18: GHSA-mjc3-mc44-c23f (moderate): Unbounded VLA stack allocation in RichString_writeFromWide() causes denial of service via crafted process command line (ncursesw build) |
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on htop-dev/htop: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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