[nycbug-talk] ports [was re: BSD on a desktop]

[Okan Demirmen]

to <snip> everything here, hoping people will notice how OT i'm
getting....

while browsing over the other QND's, i noticed the freebsd way of
installing ports from the ports tree (i'm not talking installing
via packages, ala pkg_add, but rather from source).

i've seen many times posts about "make install [clean]" as root.
i was somewhat shocked as to see that that really is the case in
freebsd. for those of you playing with, or wanting to play with,
openbsd, that method of "make install clean as root" certainly will
work, it however is not preferred. (i don't *think* i'm by myself
here).

in openbsd, both "make build" (base build) and "make (package|install)"
(ports) pull a nice variable from /etc/mk.conf - SUDO=/usr/bin/sudo.
you can guess what that does - anything that *requires" root, the
make infrastructure uses ${SUDO}. so the effects? - well, for one
you are not building any ports as root (no ./configure --whatever
as root on untrusted source) and one can also systrace the package
build process too by flicking on the systrace switch...the only
root priv one needs is to "package" and "install"...(and it is taked
care of automagically if you are in sudoers) this is also true for
"make build" in openbsd land...the entire system is built as a
normal user, except for "installs" and regress tests that require
root (pfctl, etc...), and a "release" process that makes vnds for
snapshots...it goes as far as the contents of /usr/{src,obj,ports}
need not to be owned by root, just add the user to "wsrc" group...time
to stop ;)

anyway, i'm not here to start a war or anything, but i just want to
point that out on openbsd. now, it's been a while for me on netbsd, so
i'm sure someone will clarify for us what netbsd does...i'm sure it's
close or similar to openbsd's build infrastructure.

okan

-- 
Okan Demirmen <okan at demirmen.com>
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