Bug#428213: closed by Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> (Re: Bug#428213: policy 4.9: minor (non-normative) patch for 'debian/rules build' explanation)
Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org> writes:
> Oh, I think I got the point of the section, I just don't agree.
> The problem with invoking build stuff from the binary target is that
> the binary target is run as root, whereas the build target is not.
> Ordinarily, you don't need to be root to build a package, so invoking
> the sub-targets from the build target, instead of from the binary
> target, makes more sense.
The problem is that, in this particular case, the need to be root is
exactly the reason why some packages do all the work in the binary
package. If you have a package that doesn't support building outside of
the source directory, you have to do one build, install it into the
staging area, and then do the next build. It's exactly the installing
stage that is the reason why the binary target runs as root (or
fakeroot).
It's definitely better to do the build as non-root, but there are some
cases where it's rather difficult to arrange that because upstream doesn't
support the build logic that would be desired.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: