Re: open issue of *OWN/*GRP variables and installation to DESTDIR

["Julio M. Merino Vidal" <jmerino%ac.upc.edu@localhost>]

On 09/01/2008, at 11:32, Klaus Heinz wrote:

> Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>
> > I would do it the very same way for all the user variables. The  
> > question
> > remains if we really need 100 different user variables which  
> > essentially
> > ends up as the same user in the end.
> [...]
> Another way to use ownership information is for configuration of the
> package (eg, as which user a daemon should run) and this information
> gets either put into configuration files (Apache httpd.conf) or
> hard-coded into the binary programs (qmail), so this can be done  
> without
> a problem as an unpriviledged user.
>
> So, shouldn't it be sufficient to sweep through pkgsrc and convert all
> uses of chown/chmod/chgrp to SPECIAL_PERMS? What am I missing?

Wouldn't that be a maintenance nightmare?  How do you deal with  
packages that call chown et al. from their Makefiles (not the pkgsrc  
ones)?

I'm joining this discussion late and I don't know if this has already  
been mentioned.  But why not have chown/chgrp wrappers that capture  
special permissions and automatically add the necessary bits to the  
tarballs?  (Much like the METALOG used in the base system.)

--
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmerino%ac.upc.edu@localhost>