[arch-general] [PATCH] devtools: give a writable home to nobody for use in makechrootpkg

[Magnus Therning]

On 23/08/10 19:53, Gaetan Bisson wrote:
> [2010-08-23 19:15:13 +0100] Magnus Therning:
>> Is this *really* bad, in fact so bad that upstream should be told about it,
>> since it doesn't only affect packagers?  (AFAICS the build system
>> provided by
>> upstream only works for individual users installing a personal build.)
>
> It's not that bad: at build time, after the main binary has been built,
> it is run to generate a configuration file - and this binary happens to
> always create ~/.program.d/ when it doesn't exist. Now, during the build
> process, this directory is never actually used and remains empty until
> the end of it (so you can build as nobody and then install system-wide).

I would still argue that it's completely bonkers behaviour!

I would *never* expect that building a piece of software would modify my
$HOME.  I've also never ever heard of such behaviour before.

> I really can't blame them for assuming $HOME is writable (both normally,
> and at build time, since it simplifies their build process); I see this
> as a rather unfortunate interaction with makechrootpkg.

I blame them for writing in $HOME!

From the sounds of it they are just lazy; there should be a command line
switch to control whether the directory (~/.program.d/) is created.

Anyway, I can understand *your* actions: modifying Arch stuff so that
you can
build in a chroot rather than apply a patch to the source.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus＠therning．org           Jabber: magnus＠therning．org
http://therning.org/magnus         identi.ca|twitter: magthe

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