aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/docs/markdown/snippets
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorEli Schwartz <eschwartz@archlinux.org>2023-02-07 21:24:55 -0500
committerEli Schwartz <eschwartz@archlinux.org>2023-02-20 22:33:46 -0500
commitecb32bf457ed27b75c9b4386ca1acfbd4b63869e (patch)
treebd1399cfde6eaec22c56d03ffd2cf016acdc9777 /docs/markdown/snippets
parenta878c38476dbe886bf26bc7bafb07bd4f20f763e (diff)
downloadmeson-ecb32bf457ed27b75c9b4386ca1acfbd4b63869e.zip
meson-ecb32bf457ed27b75c9b4386ca1acfbd4b63869e.tar.gz
meson-ecb32bf457ed27b75c9b4386ca1acfbd4b63869e.tar.bz2
minstall: drop privileges before running rebuild_all
If the user runs `sudo meson install` this may run ninja to build everything that gets installed. This naturally happens as root also, by default, which is bad. Instead, detect root elevation tools and drop the uid/gid of the child ninja process back to the original invoking user before doing anything.
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/markdown/snippets')
-rw-r--r--docs/markdown/snippets/meson_install_drop_privs.md16
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/markdown/snippets/meson_install_drop_privs.md b/docs/markdown/snippets/meson_install_drop_privs.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e08dfc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/markdown/snippets/meson_install_drop_privs.md
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+## `sudo meson install` now drops privileges when rebuilding targets
+
+It is common to install projects using sudo, which should not affect build
+outputs but simply install the results. Unfortunately, since the ninja backend
+updates a state file when run, it's not safe to run ninja as root at all.
+
+It has always been possible to carefully build with:
+
+```
+ninja && sudo meson install --no-rebuild
+```
+
+Meson now tries to be extra safe as a general solution. `sudo meson install`
+will attempt to rebuild, but has learned to run `ninja` as the original
+(pre-sudo or pre-doas) user, ensuring that build outputs are generated/compiled
+as non-root.