From: "ara.t.howard" <ara.t.howard@...>
Date: 2008-05-15T09:42:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Can platform agnosticism be achieved?


On May 14, 2008, at 4:51 PM, Albert Schlef wrote:

>
> How to gain root priviledge is the user's own business. I may install
> Ruby in my home directory, where I have write access to everything.
> Putting 'sudo' thingies in Makefiles seems very wrong to me. Everybody
> knows that when you install a unix program you do 'sudo make  
> install' or
> 'su -c "make install"' *yourself*. It's *not* in the Makefile.

no, you should *never* do this.  you should always do

   ./configure --prefix=prefix
   make
   sudo make install

although it's perhaps what you meant.  this is a key point, because  
programs like gems do all three.  if you were required to type

   sudo gem install

then certain things will not work (yes i know that you currently are  
required to do so) because gcc, ld, and other programs will silently  
behave differently when run as root, sometimes ignoring certain  
environment variables.  the inverse is also true - you cannot make a  
setuid binary as a regular user.  things like se-linux make this even  
more confusing and then there are programs which need to be compiled  
and owned by a certain user, like www, but which can only be written  
into system space as root.

in short i really think the issue is windows not playing nice with  
everyone else and that projects like msys, which shim the windows os  
to be mostly posix compliant are the answer.  consider that msys  
addresses not only the sudo issue but the ar one, the gcc one, the ld  
one, the bison one, the sh one, etc, etc, etc.

for years i've personally always considered msys a requirement for any  
windows/ruby development, along side a hand compiled ruby, precisely  
because it gives not only ruby, but the tools ruby and it's programs  
require to operate at full speed.

that said any script which uses sudo should at *least* do

   SUDO = ENV['SUDO']

so users can turn it off or possibly do some sort of test like

   SUDO = system('sudo ls') ? 'sudo' : ''

etc.

anyhow, i feel your pain but think sudo the tip of a posix iceberg  
more cleanly addressed outside of ruby.

cheers.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
--
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being  
better. simply reflect on that.
h.h. the 14th dalai lama