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

[Steve Randall]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:51:35 +1100
Phillip Smith <lists at fukawi2.nl> 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

Maybe this would work? Create a separate amanda-user package whose sole
function is to create the user on install and remove it on uninstall.
Make it both a build and run dependency of amanda.