installing binary archives as non-root user

db iamsudo at gmail.com
Fri Jan 12 13:40:38 UTC 2018


On 18 Nov 2017, at 20:38, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> It is preferable to install MacPorts with root (administrator) privileges and to run it with sudo. This is more secure, because, with those privileges, MacPorts can drop privileges and use the unprivileged "macports" user while building. In contrast, if you install MacPorts as your user, MacPorts builds as your user, which gives every port's build system the undesired ability to inadvertently affect any files that your user can affect. For example, if running MacPorts as your user, a badly-written build system could theoretically delete everything in your home directory; if running MacPorts with sudo, that can't happen because the "macports" user doesn't have the ability to modify your home directory.


When installing macports as non-root couldn't it also switch from non-root user to user 'macports'?

As an aside, I installed macports as non-root and built coreutils and noticed that it does as root. Is there any way to prevent a port from building as root on a non-root installation?


More information about the macports-users mailing list