Re: Usage of dpkg under cygwin

On Friday, October 11, 2002, at 10:27 AM, Claes Wallin wrote:

> Of course we need to take security seriously, but I'm not convinced
> that demanding unnecessary privileges or faking them does that. These
> files don't need to be owned by root or seem to be owned by root during
> the packaging process - we should be able to just tell tar to override
> the fs metadata. I realize that the current system works, but I reserve
> the right to call it a silly hack.

And tar does not let you override the fs metadata unless it thinks you 
are root. Making a custom version of tar that allowed anyone to do it 
would be a silly hack. Fakeroot is not a silly hack. Read the man page.

> Note that I'm not talking about the Linux/NT/Cygwin issue, or about
> NT at all really, I'm talking about "debian/rules build" in general.

I know, that's why I take these issues so seriously. debian/cygwin will 
never become an official port if it can't learn to live with the policy 
that works perfectly and better than anything else for 11+ other 
platforms and 3+ other kernels. The debian build system is not some 
geewiz hack that someone thought of over a weekend or two. It is what 
it is through careful evolution and thought out design. Otherwise it 
would just be another redhat rpm spec knock off and suck just like it.

-- 
Paul Baker

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
          -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

GPG Key: http://homepage.mac.com/pauljbaker/public.asc