Bug#679751: Patch to close out this bug

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org>]

Sean Whitton wrote:
> +.. _s-nonexistent:
> +
> +Non-existent home directories
> +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> +
> +The canonical non-existent home directory is ``/nonexistent``.  Users
> +who should not have a home directory should have their home directory
> +set to this value.

This is fine.

> +
> +The Debian autobuilders set HOME to ``/nonexistent`` so that packages
> +which try to write to a home directory will fail to build.
> +

I don't think Policy should state bits about the environment variables
Debian autobuilders set (or only mention that in a footnote).

If we go that way, I believe we should require the build environment to
have specific variables set (and recommend that the environment has no
additional random variables set unless requested for the build).  That
could mean setting

   HOME=/nonexistant
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/nonexistant
   PATH=${standard-path} (so $HOME/bin is not in $PATH)
   LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
   unsetting other LC_* variables

and so on.  It would also imply that just running `make -f debian/rules
binary` is not enough.

Ansgar