In straight BLFS (without hints), it strictly isn't - it's
> mostly a matter of you don't *need* to be root to build it,
> and it is therefore good practice not to be.
Exactly. It's basically added security - by building a package as
non-root you elliminate the risk of dodgy / malicious config scrips, for
one, or simply something 'going wrong' and compromising system
stability. Such cases are obvioulsy very rare, and in the case of
well-known and tested packages that are in (B)LFS are almost impossible.
But still getting into habit of building as non-root may be good for the
future, when your (B)LFS suddenly turns from a hobby to a critical
production server.
> But I think that David was talking specifically about the
> package user hint - following that hint, you build *and
> install* every package as non-root (...). The main reason for
> this is that it provides a form of package management.
I'll just add that if you wanted to follow the hint but just *installed*
packages as that package's user, you'd end up with many files in the
build dir being owned by root, which would be cumbersome from a
practical POV - you'd need to become root again to delete the sources...
Hope that helps.
--
David Ciecierski
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