Re: git: 24d5194306b5 - main - build: Emit a warning for build targets run as root
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:21:48 UTC
On 9 Oct 2026, at 16:04, Ed Maste <emaste@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > > The branch main has been updated by emaste: > > URL: https://cgit.FreeBSD.org/src/commit/?id=24d5194306b573bf3396858b4c0aa5d420c37c91 > > commit 24d5194306b573bf3396858b4c0aa5d420c37c91 > Author: Ed Maste <emaste@FreeBSD.org> > AuthorDate: 2025-05-14 15:23:42 +0000 > Commit: Ed Maste <emaste@FreeBSD.org> > CommitDate: 2026-10-09 15:02:30 +0000 > > build: Emit a warning for build targets run as root > > Build targets should generally be run as an unprivileged user. Even > though building as root is discouraged many users do so, so just start > with a warning. Whilst this is surely where we eventually want to end up, as it is best practice to only use root when necessary, I’m not sure this is something we should be warning about just yet, especially given the official updating-from-source instructions in the handbook [1] and equivalent in-tree UPDATING instructions have you do everything as root (well, they don’t say that explicitly, but there’s no mention of switching users, the handbook uses make kernel which has to run buildkernel as root like installkernel, and the buildworld is amongst everything else (ditto buildkernel for UPDATING)). I also suspect this interacts poorly with running etcupdate as root, which has no separation of build and install responsibilities, at least if you don’t use the (now default) -B, but possibly also even with that. So I think we have a lot of things to get in order before we start emitting this warning. Jessica [1] https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/cutting-edge/#makeworld