[pacman-dev] [suggestion] Sandboxed package building

[Martti Kühne]

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 6:26 PM, BlissSam <m13253 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> It is well known that Gentoo builds packages in a sandbox environment. It protects from badly written build scripts [1] as well as some other threats.
>
> I suggest that ArchLinux can build packages in such a sandbox, and this behavior can be easily configured via makepkg.conf.
>
> It seems that sandbox and lib32-sandbox ported from Gentoo in AUR works fine on Arch.[2] So why don't Arch build packages in a sandbox? I admit that sandbox is not always safe, but it does protects.
>
>
>
> Notes:
> [1]:
> scripts like this: rm -Rf ${pkgdirr}/home
> since ${pkgdirr} is mistyped, it will be `rm -Rf /home`
>

Seriously, but isn't that why makepkg shouldn't be executed as root
user? Arch's build system essentially does this by implementing the
temporary root dir in $pkgdir. This is a terrible example, since I'm
fairly sure pkgdir is not available in *.install functions, and you're
not supposed to meddle with installed files in that part. Please first
read about abs and how it comes with its own safeties.

cheers!
mar77i