On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 08:16 -0500, Burlynn Corlew Jr (velcroshooz) wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 8:12 AM, Carlos Mennens <carloswill@gmail.com>wrote:
I am getting ready to use my newly built Arch Linux system for the 1st time and use AUR and read the Wiki but I have a question that I am not clear on:
Next choose an appropriate build directory. A build directory is simply a directory where the package will be made or "built" and can be any directory. Examples of commonly used directories are:
~/builds
Now when I create the "~/builds" directory, does it matter if I do this in a regular user's home directory or in 'roots'? It is not very clear and I don't want to break anything or improperly build a package from AUR.
I dont know if your using an aur helper or using makepkg alone, but i would use ~/builds in a users' directory. running makepkg as root is bad practice.
I don't see that anybody has touched on this, but the reason that running makepkg as a regular user is best is because AUR pkgbuilds are not checked for malicious code before being made available for download. There is a great community of TUs and AUR users that will usually spot bad pkgbuilds before anyone is affected, but it is ultimately the end-user's obligation to check the pkgbuild/install scripts for bad code. Having the build() func execute rm -rf / doesn't do quite as much when you're a normal user. Root, however, can destroy a system that way. Hope that clears up our reasoning better than "its bad!" Gary