From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2008-02-03T02:43:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Temporarily dropping root access


On Feb 2, 2008, at 9:51 AM, fw wrote:

> On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 00:37 +0900, John Joyce wrote:
>
> [..snip..]
>
>> Sure!
>> Many installers run as root, so often building with make would
>> require sudo,
>> same can be for rake.
>> Anytime something needs to write to a directory not owned by the  
>> user.
>>
>
> Building as root != installing as root. The build process _should_
> always be able to run as any user, though installation may have to run
> with elevated privileges depending on permissions on the target file
> system.
>
> Felix
>
>
Well, sometimes installers do build something!
But as far as running as root it definitely depends on where the  
build takes place and what it needs to do.
It most definitely cannot run as any user on every system.
If it needs to write to a directory without write access for the uid  
then you need to run as another user with more privileges.
Normally, you would expect a good make/rake build process to do  
everything in a directory already owned under current uid, but that's  
just not always the case.
On OS X for example, you normally do need to run sudo for building  
things with make or rake. If not, then your system has been changed  
in a lot of ways.