lukem@netbsd.org said:
> Your first change could bite people who build to DESTDIR=/ and have
> different UIDs/GIDs for system users/groups.

Uhm - so many options... So how about using the -N by default and
allow to switch it off in expert mode?

> However, this will still not help you for ${INSTALL} (it will use the
> system permissions), or a few other places

Ah yes, I could have thought of that...

>     *	Only support UNPRIVED && DESTDIR builds

Oh no -- I'm always doing DESTDIR=/ builds on my laptop. I can live
with minor glitches, but I don't want to waste disk space for another
binary tree + tar archives.

>    *	Add a -N flag to install(8), and change ${MTREE}, ${INSTALL}
>	${PAX} (et al) in the Makefiles to use -N.

This is what I'd prefer too.
pax already supports it. install needs work, but shouldn't be a problem.
chown(8) is used in share/zoneinfo - I'm not sure we should modify it,
to avoid incompatibilities, and because it seems it is used at that
one place only. I see two ways here:

-replace the chown -R by some find|xargs install or some pax magic
-create a shell wrapper which replaces text uids/gids by numbers

_If_ we decide for a wrapper, we could also use it for install(1)
(if there are no serious performance implications).

> I would argue that the need for
> the /sys symlink *by default* is not necessary

Is it a relict from LINKINCLUDES times, or how this option was called?

best regards
Matthias