Read 2026-10-04
orchardcms/orchardcore: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in orchardcms/orchardcore's code and history at 41a6b01: 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 | strong |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongsrc/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/Assets/Vendor/jquery-ui-1.14.2/jquery-ui.js is 18,842 lines, 607× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 31 lines. 36 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 18,842. 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.
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/Assets/Vendor/jquery-ui-1.14.2/jquery-ui.js:1 — 18,842 lines (607× median) |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/jquery-ui-1.14.2/jquery-ui.js:1 — 18,842 lines (607× median) |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/jquery-3.6.0/jquery.js:1 — 10,882 lines (351× median) |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/jquery-3.5.1/jquery.js:1 — 10,873 lines (350× median) |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/jquery-3.4.1/jquery.js:1 — 10,599 lines (341× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate486 test files against 6,178 source files (7.9%). 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.
| 486 test files / 6,178 source files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
strong16 files still carry code deprecated more than two years ago
adequate16 files were marked deprecated over two years ago and still are, the oldest since May 2021. A deprecation is a promise to remove. Ask what still depends on these, and whether removing them is scheduled.
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/popper-1.16.1/popper.js — deprecated since May 2021 |
src/OrchardCore/OrchardCore.Email.Abstractions/MailMessage.cs — deprecated since Apr 2023 |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.CustomSettings/Services/CustomSettingsService.cs — deprecated since Nov 2023 |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Search/Drivers/SearchSettingsDisplayDriver.cs — deprecated since Jan 2024 |
src/OrchardCore/OrchardCore.ContentManagement.Abstractions/Metadata/Builders/ContentTypePartDefinitionBuilder.cs — deprecated since Feb 2024 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate1 Dockerfile runs the application as root
adequateNo USER instruction switches away from root, so the process runs with full privileges inside the container. It is a one-line fix and an ordinary expectation, which is why its absence is worth asking about: it usually says more about whether anyone has reviewed the deployment than about this container specifically.
Dockerfile — runs as root |
4 shell commands built from strings
adequate4 places run a command through a shell (`shell=True`, `os.system`, `exec` with a template) rather than passing arguments. Where any part comes from outside, it is command injection. Ask where each one's input comes from.
.scripts/assets-manager/build.mjs:31 — command run through a shell |
.scripts/assets-manager/build.mjs:108 — command run through a shell |
.scripts/assets-manager/build.mjs:110 — command run through a shell |
66 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 94 high or critical
adequate66 of 1,724 locked dependencies match 166 published advisories in OSV, 94 of them rated high or critical. A lockfile says which version is installed, not whether the flawed code is reachable from this product, so each needs a look. Most are fixed by an upgrade, and the advisory names the version. This lockfile pins development tools alongside what ships and does not say which is which, so some of these may never reach a user.
92 places insert HTML from a variable without sanitising it
adequate92 places set HTML from a value that is neither a literal nor passed through a sanitiser. Where the value can come from a user, that is stored cross-site scripting, and it is the first thing a buyer's security review looks for in a frontend.
.scripts/bloom/helpers/evalScripts.ts:8 — HTML from a variable |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.AuditTrail/Assets/js/App.tsx:94 — HTML from a variable |
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.DataLocalization/Assets/ts/translation-editor.ts:266 — HTML from a variable |
1 vendored component with no licence
adequateThird-party code is committed into this repository without any statement of the terms it arrived under. Unknown terms are harder to deal with than inconvenient ones: an awkward licence can be complied with, an absent one cannot. Each of these needs its origin established before the code changes hands.
src/OrchardCore.Modules/OrchardCore.Resources/wwwroot/Vendor/nestedSortable-2.1a — 3 tracked files, no licence file |
Observability & Operations
adequateNo telemetry or error reporting is wired in anywhere
adequateNone of 8,022 readable files references an instrumentation, metrics or error-reporting library. If this system is in production, nobody learns that it broke from the system itself — they learn it from a customer. That is a reliability finding before it is an observability one.
| searched 8,022 tracked text files for 16 known instrumentation libraries; manifests for metrics, tracing and error-reporting families; locked dependencies for the packages that emit; 0 matched |
No error reporter is wired in
adequateNothing in the service initialises an error reporter (Sentry, Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger or an APM agent). An exception in production reaches a person only if someone is reading the logs, which usually means a customer reports it first.
| no error reporter initialised |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
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