[PATCH] portmaster with SU_CMD

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:58:25 -0600, Stefan Sperling <stsp at stsp.name> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I haven't got all the mails in this thread so far because I
> haven't been subscribed to ports@ in a while.
> I'll try to reply to what I've read in the archives so far.
>
> I'm subscribed again now so I will get followups from here on
> without people having to Cc me.
>
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 03:31:42PM -0200, Ricardo Nabinger Sanchez wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:33:55 -0600
>> "Jeremy Messenger" <mezz7 at cox.net> wrote:
>>
>> > I agree, because you can't build any ports in /usr/ports as in normal
>> > user anyway.
>
> Nonesense. I described one particular way of doing it in the
> mail that started this thread.
>
>> > I don't see any good reason to do it either.
> There's tons of good reasons for doing it. For example, my reason
> is that I don't see a point in running something as root that does not
> need root, especially if execution of arbitrary commands is involved.

I don't count this as a good reason, since there is no reason to do it in  
complicate way for portmaster. The portmaster required root for install,  
so why not just login as in root and run portmaster?

> This can always lead to problems. I'd rather not have some bug
> in some build or configure script mess with arbitrary stuff in
> my filesystems.

You do have a good point but I have yet to see configure/build will mess  
up the filesystem, which installation will. I have seen the installation  
will poke (not edit files, but install files in the wrong place) around in  
/ filesystem a few of times. Kind of no difference.

>> Yes you can.
>> You just need to set WRKDIRPREFIX in your /etc/make.conf,
>> to "/tmp" for instance.  I've been doing that happily for some years  
>> now.
>
> There's literally tons of ways of doing it.
>
>> > No, not by default and I have pointed 'in /usr/ports'.
>
> Arguing that building ports as root is the default behaviour
> in FreeBSD is no argument at all against the patch, because
> the patch does not change this default behaviour.
>
> It just adds an option that makes portmaster work nicely with
> another option that is already provided by FreeBSD, namely
> setting SU_CMD in /etc/make.conf.
>
> The same option is provided in NetBSD's pkgsrc and OpenBSD's
> ports, by the way. It's not that exotic.
>
> But:
>
> I respect Doug's caution, because the patch isn't small.
> It took me a while to get it working right on my system.
>
> It could have side effects no one knows about -- AFAIK it's only
> been tested on a single system yet (mine), with only a single
> way of "building ports as non-root" while there's many more
> systems out there that are all set up differently.
>
> So I guess it would help if people who want this feature simply
> test the patch for a while and then report whether it works for
> them or not.
>
> And people who don't want the patch test it with their standard
> procedure to see if it messes things up for them or not.
>
> Just saying that you want it or don't want it without testing
> whether it actually works or breaks anything for you won't help
> Doug make the decision whether to adopt this patch or not.
>
> He needs proper feedback to make an informed decision.

Exactly what I am doing with no shame. :-) I had to jump in to push people  
to give a very good reason other than 'me too'. I have yet to see a very  
good reason other than 'just because I want to'. It looks like it works.  
;-)

Cheers,
Mezz

> I need proper feedback to fix any issues that might come up
> for other people using this patch.
>
> So if you have the time, please test it, no matter if you
> want to use the -S flag or not.
>
> Here's my own take again:
>
> I have been using the patch in its current form for 2 or 3 weeks
> during which I updated ports about three or four times.
> I haven't noticed any regressions so far. In my already described
> setup it even made it through the big gnome-2.18->2.20 update
> without any issues, except for one issue unrelated to portmaster
> which has already been filed.
> See http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/117976
>
> I also found an issue in devel/ncurses while testing the patch,
> not related to portmaster either, but to the port not heeding
> WRKDIRPREFIX correctly. This bug has since been fixed:
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/117643


-- 
mezz7 at cox.net  -  mezz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD GNOME Team  -  FreeBSD Multimedia Hat (ports, not src)
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/  -  gnome at FreeBSD.org
http://wiki.freebsd.org/multimedia  -  multimedia at FreeBSD.org