ports/76422: devel/automake ports fail to install when built as non-root

[Michael C. Shultz]

On Tuesday 08 February 2005 01:06 pm, Ade Lovett wrote:
>  > The pre-install and post-install targets are not run with elevated
>  > privileges, so the mkdir commands in the pre-install target fail
>  > when trying to install as non-root (in other words, su seems to
>  > only be applied for do-install)
>
> A quick scan of the ports tree seems to indicate that a significant
> percentage of *all* ports appear to have this issue.
>
> I can certainly go ahead and make the change to automake*, and even
> autoconf* and libtool* at the same time, but these are only 8 ports
> out of many thousands that currently require elevated privileges in
> pre-install and post-install targets.
>
> It may make considerably more sense to do a complete sweep of the
> tree rather than piecemeal.
>
> ports@ cc'd for a wider audience.
>
> -aDe

If a port is prefix compliant and the prefix is set to the user's home
directory then lowered privileges may be waranted, otherwise only
root should be installing and removing ports IMHO.

-Mike