[aur-general] Suggestions for dealing with packages that require root

[alexander.r at gmx.com]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 04:51:35PM +1100, Phillip Smith wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm after some suggestions for how to deal with packages (namely amanda
> [1]) that require root to build. In this particular instance, amanda needs
> the user/group that it will run under to be present at compile time. Less
> than ideal, but that's what upstream gives us.
> 
> At the moment, I check if the user/group 'amanda' already exist, and if
> not, create them. This has the side effect that makepkg needs to be run as
> root if the user/group doesn't exist. I then cleanup (delete) the
> user/group at the end if I created them. That's messy enough already, but
> it's been suggested that I use sudo to handle the user add/delete parts to
> make the PKGBUILD friendlier to AUR helpers. I know helpers needs to work
> with PKGBUILD's, not PKGBUILD's made to work with helpers, but perhaps
> there is a middle-ground where we can all eat our cake? ;)
> 
> I don't want to include sudo as a makedepends since it requires
> configuration to work properly, nor do I want to make the PKGBUILD
> "intelligent" to try and auto-detect a privilege escalation tool (sudo or
> su) which will lead to a bigger mess.
> 
> Does anyone have a smarter/cleaner/easier way to deal with this scenario?
> 
> Cheers,
> ~p
> 
> [1] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/am/amanda/PKGBUILD
---end quoted text---

I'd just print explanatory message and error out, if group does not 
exist in system - people usually do not give root to package without (at 
least) reading AUR page anyway.
-- 
My AUR packages - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?SeB=m&K=AlexanderR