[arch-general] makepkg as root

[Eli Schwartz]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:18 PM, Mark Lee <mark at markelee.com> wrote:

> DId you read any of Ralf's messages? He prefaces by commenting about
> backwards compatibility and Torvalds' comments.
>
> This isn't just about makepkg; this is about backwards compatibility as
> well. Just because yaourt changed it's process to match upstream doesn't
> change any of the previous concerns about backwards compatibility and
> dialogue regarding changes.
>
> Regards,
> Mark
>

That was the offtopic I referred to. Well, some of it.

Since it doesn't actually have anything to do with this change.

As he himself stated:

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at rocketmail.com>
wrote:

> Linux and BSD user space is software based on other software. Yaourt
> and some other software does need pacman. Pacman needs bash, curl and
> other packages and those packages depend on other packages too.
>
> This policy does only work, when there are agreements about backwards
> compatibility.
>
> makepkg provided the --asroot option and within a major release it
> dropped backwards compatibility. Fortunately it is a minor issue that
> --asroot is dropped, but the real issue is that it already might be a
> fashion not to care about other software, not to care about work flows,
> IOW to be careless, ignorant.


Linus and systemd, while no doubt exciting, doesn't mean that the ArchLinux
developers have decided it is cool to break backwards compatibility. So
while have no intention of arguing with the concern for backwards
compatibility, pacman 4.2 and the removal of --asroot is not a
backwards-compatibility issue in the end, as the very person who brought it
up ultimately determined.

And thus, the concern about backwards compatibility is offtopic in this
thread

-- Eli Schwartz