--with-macports-user

[Bryan Blackburn]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 10:01:49PM -0500, Ryan Schmidt said:
[...]
> What else does --with-no-root-privileges do? The help only says it
> will "Specify that MacPorts should be installed in your home
> directory". I do not want MacPorts in my home directory; I want it
> where I indicate with --prefix. The name of the option implies that
> it should be used by someone who does not have root privileges, or
> who does not want MacPorts to use root privileges. I have and do want
> MacPorts to use root privileges if necessary, but for most ports it
> is not necessary. Should I use the --with-no-root-privileges option?

Which documentation are you reading, it sounds like that may be not quite
correct?  The comments in aclocal.m4 just say:

  if with user specifies --with-no-root-privileges,
  use current user and group.
  use ~/Library/Tcl as Tcl package directory

so it is sort of a convenience for install user and group (to your current
user and group), and for the Tcl package dir.

> 
> >As for --with-macports-user, you'll want to set that to the same
> >user when doing non-root, as otherwise it defaults to root currently
> >(apparently due to the functionality having bugs still [1]).  In
> >the future
> >this would be the user who would actually own the build as it happens
> 
> And who will that be? My user id, root, or some new user?

Good question, probably something we'd need to figure out to get it
completed; at least for root installs, it could even use nobody for
building, though nobody is sometimes abused for such purposes...

> 
> >then
> >port would only set to root for the actual install.
> >
> >Bryan
> >
> >[1] - <http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/base/aclocal.m4#L358>
> 
> I see the comment there reads "dropping root privs is still buggy".
> In what way?

No idea, as that comment is the sole source of my information concerning
that.

Bryan