Why was the macports user implemented

[Brandon Allbery]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 15:26, Rodolfo Aramayo <raramayo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Great. Good explanation. Thanks, but then that begs the question as to
> why the files in '/opt/local/' are not owned by macports:macports and
> instead by 'root:admin and/or root:wheel'? Am I missing something in
> here??
>

You don't want to allow Portfiles to remove random files owned by you;
likewise, you don't want to allow it to remove random files installed by
other ports (which you have implicitly validated by "port install"ing them
as some user other than the macports user; this is normally root but might
be yourself or some other user if you chose).  The port build environment is
set up to protect not only your files but also the rest of MacPorts.
 Ideally it'd be a sandbox in which only the port's own working files could
be modified by a rogue command, but MacPorts isn't quite there yet.

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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