David Powell wrote:
On 02/11/10 16:22, Brock Pytlik wrote:
But if I'm correct, then I'd suggest that optimizing for the average
user, and not the sysadmin of a large multiuser system is the right
choice. In that case, I think what I outlined above probably makes a
sense. Most desktop/laptop users won't bother to set up a user image
since they're admin for the entire box. So, check 1 would fail and 2
would succeed, meaning their operations by default would happen on the
system image. That's what we desire I think.
With a large system with many users, the admin could set each user up
with their own user image. That means that a user could install emacs
(for example) without needing the sysadmin to do it for them. The
downside would be that the admin would need to remember to set their
PKG_IMAGE or cd to / when they wanted to modify the system image.
Even if this is indeed a likely scenario, I am disturbed by the fact
that the privileged user's pkg operations can be affected by the mere
contents of their current working directory or its parents.
This arrangement is analogous to putting . in root's path, and saying
that root must explicitly set their PATH to something safe before
running any command. We would never do that.
I think that's a false analogy. The effect would be have their action
happen on a more limited basis, not a larger one. So instead of
installing the package into the root system, they'll install into their
user image. Also, if a sysadmin didn't like this behavior, they could
remove their user image, or set their PKG_IMAGE to default to /. This
places the burden on the admin to account for their image correctly
instead of placing that load on every user.
As a side note, notice I suggested that the check should actually to be
to check user's home dir if PKG_IMAGE wasn't set, not the current dir. I
mentioned cd'ing to / only if there was a reason that we didn't want to
go with the other method.
Brock
Dave
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