Ports Accessing $HOME

[Jeremy Lavergne]

> Well, an mtree violation is by definition a port that installs files to
> locations that are not specified in the mtree. But here we're talking
> about a port that merely creates a temporary file during the build, not
> something the port ultimately installs. So it's not an mtree violation.
> But it is definitely not allowed, at the moment, for a port to be
> attempting to create a file in $HOME, hence the error in the aforemetioned
> ticket. We had $HOME set to /dev/null on trunk before MacPorts 2.0.0 was
> released; we changed it to /var/empty so it was an actual directory, but
> nobody may write to this directory. There are plenty of ports that expect
> there to be a writeable home directory, and that's not an unreasonable
> assumption I think. Maybe MacPorts should create a temporary writeable
> directory (inside workpath?) before installing a port, let the port do
> whatever it wants with it, and clean it up afterward. MacPorts could even
> issue a warning or error if any files remain in this $HOME after the
> destroot phase runs; it could mean the port assumed it was helping the
> user set something up, which of course won't work, so this would be a good
> indication to the maintainer of something they need to manually handle in
> post-activate or via some explanatory notes.

We could take that one step further and allow bundling of things left in
the temp home to be run executed on "first run" to setup the user's dir.
This would help dbus a lot :-) and other ports that need special things
done that users often miss.

Would could then end up with `port config [--user=$USER | --all-users]
$PORTNAME` to handle this. Sorry, I'm done daydreaming.