On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Curt Sampson wrote:

# On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Simon Burge wrote:
# 
# > I get the feeling (just a hunch!) that not many people try to do as
# > much of a build as they can without root privileges.
# 
# Of course not. Those of us who have tried this have run into such
# flack from others when we started attempting to make changes that
# would move us toward a non-root build that we finally gave up and
# just started doing everything as root.

I can't verify this for sure, as I think I've modified my /etc/mtree/
NetBSD.dist file to reflect my own reality, but at one point, I thought
/usr/src was mode 755 all the way down.  This made it a bit difficult
to do a build as a non-root user.

The things you CANNOT do as non-root are to install properly and to build
a tarball with proper modes and owners.

# In general, it's not worth the effort to improve our build systems;
# it just gets you flamed by other developers who don't want to make
# even minor changes in the way they build.

FWIW, I'd like to see a proposal somewhere -- even if it's a wish list --
pertaining to the way users should be building their systems.  Personally,
I don't LIKE to have to be super-user to build, but I frequently am.

Put it up on the web page somewhere.


				--*greywolf;
--
"This is obviously a definition of the word 'safe' with which I was
not previously acquainted." -- Arthur Dent, upon discovering that they were
aboard a Vogon starship.