Bug#835451: debian-policy: Building as root should be discouraged

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, Aug 02, 2017 at 10:52:59AM -0400, Sean Whitton wrote:
> control: tag -1 -patch
> 
> Hello again Santiago,
> 
> Some of us here at DebCamp have been reading your message and we're
> still not sure of your intention.
> 
> On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 09:41:26PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > Debian Policy 4.9 says:
> > 
> >  For some packages, notably ones where the same source tree is compiled
> >  in different ways to produce two binary packages, the build target
> >  does not make much sense. For these packages it is good enough to
> >  provide two (or more) targets (build-a and build-b or whatever) for
> >  each of the ways of building the package, and a build target that does
> >  nothing. The binary target will have to build the package in each of
> >  the possible ways and make the binary package out of each. 
> > 
> > Actually, no, I don't think that's "good enough".
> > 
> > We should better avoid building packages as root (including fakeroot).
> 
> We already have in policy both:
> 
>     (i) The build target must not do anything that might require root
>         privilege.
> 
>     (iI) The binary targets must be invoked as root [or fakeroot].
> 
> However, in the paragraph you quoted, there is a loophole: if the
> build-a and build-b targets are not invoked by the build target, instead
> directly invoked by the binary target, then (i) does not apply, and
> indeed (ii) applies and they will be invoked as root.
> 
> Is that why you want to delete that paragraph?

Yes, indeed!

There is some background in libtool Bug #806654. It was a really
strange build failure and it was not self-evident that the failure was
the result of building as root. In this particular case, the package
had only standard build-indep and build-arch targets, but it made me
to read policy again and that's when I found about the "good enough"
thing.

Thanks.