Re: [gentoo-dev] CWD-relative ROOT support in portage: misfeature?
On 8/18/2012 5:50 PM, Ian Stakenvicius wrote: On 2012-08-17, at 11:00 PM, Gregory M. Turner g...@malth.us wrote: greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ mkdir foo greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ ROOT=foo portageq envvar ROOT /tmp/foo/ Does /anybody/ use this feature? Sorry for the HTML response... am on the road. I don't use the feature but I would fully expect said behavior. ie, going with the example above I would expect that I'd need the / in front for the path to not be relative. A user and maintainer of this (vapier) has emerged. I pooh-poohed the relative-ROOT idea when I discovered it a few days ago, but I've flip-flopped. I was concerned it would be exploitable by Bad People(tm), but I think it's no more exploitable than absolute-only ROOT, so long as its implemented correctly. So far, nobody's turned up to advocate against the status quo (except me, but I'm fine with it now), so I think the matter can be considered resolved. -gmt
Re: [gentoo-dev] CWD-relative ROOT support in portage: misfeature?
On 2012-08-17, at 11:00 PM, Gregory M. Turner g...@malth.us wrote:
It has come to my attention that gentoo supports relative ROOT, which is to
say that, by design, portage will act as though (in bash terms):
ROOT
equals
${PWD}/${ROOT}
when (again in bash terms):
[[ $ROOT != /* ]]
at the moment execution crosses the boundary between a non-portage program
and a portage program. For example, I ran the following from a bash-prompt
with PWD=/tmp in a portage-2.2 ~amd64 environment:
greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ mkdir foo
greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ ROOT=foo portageq envvar ROOT
/tmp/foo/
Question: do we really want this behavior?
I have reason to believe that almost nobody uses this feature (namely,
gcc-config and binutils-config are both broken under it for ages and nobody
filed a bug or fixed it: see bugzilla #431104).
Does /anybody/ use this feature? If not, I'd suggest that the portage team
might ask itself whether the benefits of continuing to maintain it are
greater than the hassle and potential for error it facilitates.
Just my 2c,
-gmt
Sorry for the HTML response... am on the road.
I don't use the feature but I would fully expect said behavior. ie, going with
the example above I would expect that I'd need the / in front for the path to
not be relative.
[gentoo-dev] CWD-relative ROOT support in portage: misfeature?
It has come to my attention that gentoo supports relative ROOT, which
is to say that, by design, portage will act as though (in bash terms):
ROOT
equals
${PWD}/${ROOT}
when (again in bash terms):
[[ $ROOT != /* ]]
at the moment execution crosses the boundary between a non-portage
program and a portage program. For example, I ran the following from a
bash-prompt with PWD=/tmp in a portage-2.2 ~amd64 environment:
greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ mkdir foo
greg@fedora64vmw /tmp $ ROOT=foo portageq envvar ROOT
/tmp/foo/
Question: do we really want this behavior?
I have reason to believe that almost nobody uses this feature (namely,
gcc-config and binutils-config are both broken under it for ages and
nobody filed a bug or fixed it: see bugzilla #431104).
Does /anybody/ use this feature? If not, I'd suggest that the portage
team might ask itself whether the benefits of continuing to maintain it
are greater than the hassle and potential for error it facilitates.
Just my 2c,
-gmt
