Bug#391246: general: Buildds should consider changing $HOME
On Wed, OcFt 04, 2006 at 09:32:16AM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> However, I'd like to point out that this problem is not special to TeX.
> Many programs create ~/.progname directories when run for the first time
> - and these directories contain configuration options which might cause
> trouble, since they are not updated or subject to dpkg conffile
> questions when the package changes configuration options. It might be a
> good thing to require such tools to have a commandline switch or obey a
> commandline variable that prevents this. Alternatively, HOME could be
> set to the temporary build directory, so that everything happens there.
It seems to me that a package build should not
* depend on $HOME not containing reasonable settings
* change anything in $HOME
If the package runs some program which spews droppings all over $HOME,
or which might malfunction if the user has an unusual personal
configuration, then it should set $HOME itself.
Ian.
Reply to: