[GRASS5] GRASS packaging issues

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

Hi Justin,

On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 02:58:59PM +0700, Justin Hickey wrote:
> Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> > during preparation of a GRASS rpm package, two issues
> > occured:
> > 
> > - is there a reason why manual confirmation is requested
> >         when building as root? It is not unusual to be root
> >         when creating a rpm package.
> 
> The reason confirmation is requested is due to UNIX system
> administration practices. In general, you should never do anything as
> root that you do not have to. The potential for damaging your system
> unintentionally is not worth it.
> 
> Even though compiling is generally safer than installation, it is still
> good practice not to compile as root. So, I put the confirmation step in
> to warn people not familiar with this practice and/or UNIX that what
> they are doing could be dangerous.
> 
> Do you actually need root access to create an rpm? I never created one
> so I don't know. If not, then I would suggest not creating it as root.
> But if you need root access then you can bypass the confirmation by
> typing
> 
> make real-binaries
> 
> However, this bypass may not work with the new Makefile system, since I
> think we could get rid of the real* targets using GNU Make. So, if
> people want the confirmation removed, then I will remove it. 

I think this confirmation is reasoned by GRASS history, because
once there was only one make install step that also built the
binaries.

If it is intended to furnish GRASS with the usual autoconf/automake/...
type of building some day, the root-confirmation would be quite unusual.

I bypassed with 'echo "y" | make' which should work always :-)

I vote for removing the confirmation, but I don't have a problem if it
stays.

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/

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