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

[Dave Reisner]

On Dec 20, 2012 6:57 AM, "Steve Randall" <srandall52 at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> 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.

Please no. The AUR has enough cruft already.

To the OP, I suggest finding out what legitimately fails in the build when
the user doesn't exist and patching the build system to suck less. When
you're done, send your improvements upstream.