[pacman-dev] [PATCH] Option to enable running makepkg in root

[Saul Tigh]

Dear Pacman devs,

Although running makepkg in root is frowned upon and considered dangerous,
there are circumstances that one might need to do so. For example, during
the bootstrap process of building my own toy gnu/linux distro (which uses
pacman/makepkg), I have to run makepkg in root. I have added an option
called "ALLOWROOT" to makepkg which when is set to 1 enables running
makepkg in root. This option is disable by default and wouldn't cause any
issue for the average user of pacman and makepkg. This is my first patch
for pacman so criticism is welcome and please let me know how to improve it.

>From def5a1cae3513e75aa6447a27f3f22a207ffdc61 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Saul Tigh <jemzipx at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 18:58:27 +0700
Subject: Signed-off-by: Saul Tigh <jemzipx at gmail.com>

Although running makepkg in root is frowned upon, there are
circumstances that one might need to do so. For example, during the
bootstrap process of building his toy gnu/linux distro, the author of
this patch needs to run makepkg in root. This option is disable by
default. It can be enable by setting 'ALLOWROOT' in makepkg to 1.
---
 scripts/makepkg.sh.in | 15 ++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/scripts/makepkg.sh.in b/scripts/makepkg.sh.in
index ca3e7459..b2cd8ee4 100644
--- a/scripts/makepkg.sh.in
+++ b/scripts/makepkg.sh.in
@@ -79,6 +79,7 @@ SIGNPKG=''
 SPLITPKG=0
 SOURCEONLY=0
 VERIFYSOURCE=0
+ALLOWROOT=0

 if [[ -n $SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH ]]; then
  REPRODUCIBLE=1
@@ -1175,9 +1176,13 @@ fi

 if (( ! INFAKEROOT )); then
  if (( EUID == 0 )); then
- error "$(gettext "Running %s as root is not allowed as it can cause
permanent,\n\
-catastrophic damage to your system.")" "makepkg"
- exit $E_ROOT
+ if (( ALLOWROOT )); then
+ plain "Running as root is not recommended. Proceed with caution."
+ else
+ error "$(gettext "Running %s as root is not allowed as it can cause
permanent,\n\
+ catastrophic damage to your system.")" "makepkg"
+ exit $E_ROOT
+ fi
  fi
 else
  if [[ -z $FAKEROOTKEY ]]; then
@@ -1352,6 +1357,10 @@ if (( SOURCEONLY )); then
  check_source_integrity all
  cd_safe "$startdir"

+ # allow makepkg to run in root
+ if (( ALLOWROOT )); then
+ unset FAKEROOTKEY
+ fi
  enter_fakeroot

  if [[ $SIGNPKG = 'y' ]]; then
-- 
2.20.1