Re: How should we handle fink-bld?

On 4/23/12 6:15 AM, Dustin Cartwright wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 12:43 AM, Alexander Hansen
> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>     Now that we've got master fink able to bootstrap, another question to
>     resolve before we do a release is how we bring in the 'fink-bld' user.
> 
>     1) One option that has been mentioned (dmacks) is to append
>     passwd-fink-bld in the implicit BuildDepends for every package.  This is
>     currently done for 'dev-tools' as well.  One drawback is that our
>     10.5/10.6 passwd is still monolithic, so this means that all of passwd
>     will get installed (not just built) as soon as a user installs his/her
>     first package. On the plus side, we're not increasing the list of
>     "special" (built as part of the bootstrap operation but not Essential)
>     packages, and it will take but one additional line of code in
>     PkgVersion.pm to implement.
> 
>     2) Another choice would be to strip the passwd-fink-bld stuff out of the
>     passwd package and let fink add its user in its own PostInstScript.
>     This would involve a lot more coding that option 1).  On the other hand,
>     we avoid installing all of passwd for all 10.5/10.6 users.
> 
> 
> Another option is:
> 
> 3) Keep fink-bld optional and rely on the existing fallback of building
> as the standard OS X user "nobody." Using fink-bld could still be
> encouraged, but at least people wouldn't be forced to modify their user
> database to install fink. For example, the bootstrap script could have
> an additional question in order to add fink-bld and yes could be the
> default and recommended answer.
> 
> A key question is: what are the benefits of building as "fink-bld" over
> building as "nobody"? I suppose that in theory fink-bld is more
> isolated, but practically speaking, does it matter? On my computer, the
> only files in /private and /usr which belong to "nobody" are a temporary
> folder, an empty launchd plist, and the "locate" database (I didn't have
> the patience to search the whole file hierarchy, but /private includes
> /etc and /var). An errant build causing damage to any of these is not a
> significant concern.
> 
> Building as nobody is lightly tested compared to building as fink-bld.
> On the other hand, adding fink-bld involves touching the user database,
> which inherently more risky than running the compile scripts as "nobody."
> 
> I can see the argument that in some ways, it's simpler to just force
> everyone to install fink-bld, but in other ways it's more complicated.
> If fink-bld is optional, then there's no need to worry about making sure
> it gets added during the upgrade from 0.32 to 0.33 and different ways
> that can fail. There's no need to worry about the admittedly unlikely
> scenario of the system already having a user with UID 266, and what
> would happen if fink-bld gets added with the same UID.
> 
> I wasn't paying attention to fink development when --build-as-nobody was
> introduced, so maybe it's clear to everyone else why "fink-bld" is much
> better than "nobody." However, from my perspective, the discussion
> quickly jumped to the mechanics of adding "fink-bld" without every
> discussing whether it's really necessary. Maybe it is, but I just wanted
> to raise the possibility of avoiding it.
> 
> 
> Dustin


We originally used the system's "nobody" user, but after some discussion
it was decided that there were potential risks associated with that
(which I can't remember offhand).

It was decided to set up our own unpriviliged user which had a low
probability of any upstream package using for anything.

-- 
Alexander Hansen, Ph.D.
Fink User Liaison
http://finkakh.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/got-job/

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