I got some helpful security advice from Alistair Crooks
that it is no longer recommended to build packages as
root. I have been following this advice.

But... Some days ago I decided to do 'make upgrade' on
/usr/pkgsrc/lang/perl58 for a slow laptop with lots and
lots of other packages dependent on Perl. I'll bet that
it has asked for my root passwd no less than fifty times.
Every time it stops and waits. I will not run all night
that way. And the machine is pretty much tied up in
between times. Kind of a hassle, you know?

I greatly miss being able to just enter 'make && make install'
then forget about the whole business until it was done.

So... Is there a rule-of-thumb or a list of what packages
one ought to avoid building as root? Might I have been
okay to do it for Perl? Can I just trust the warnings
about security holes on the software webpage or some such
method for choosing when to not build as root?

Or should I just bite the bullet and resign myself to
entering my password many, many times? I might have just
left it at Perl 5.6 for all this trouble.

Regards,

Gan

-- 

  Mistera Sturno - Rarest Extinct Bird

  <(+)__       Gan Uesli Starling
   ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
    `||`
     ++        http://starling.us