[pacman-dev] [WIP 0/4] Dynamic Users

[Allan McRae]

On 19/03/16 23:50, Andrew Gregory wrote:
> Packages with files owned by dynamically created users/groups have to create
> the user and chown the files in a post_install/post_upgrade install script.
> This makes pacman's database out of sync with the filesystem.  See FS#43484.
> 
> This patchset makes alpm/pacman aware of symbolic usernames and uses fakeuser
> (https://github.com/progandy/fakeuser) to provide a method for PKGBUILDs to add
> fake users.
> 
> alpm will still fall back to the raw uid if it has not already been assigned,
> so packages that add users in post_install/post_upgrade will continue to work
> correctly, but should be changed to use pre_install/pre_upgrade instead.
> 
> The makepkg portions should be complete, other than documentation.  The
> alpm/pacman portions still need to be optimized to use a cache so that we don't
> have to consult /etc/{passwd,group} for every single file.

Great!  I have no substantial comments from a brief look at the
patchset.  Minor comments to follow.

> *NOTE*: there is a bug in libarchive that prevents the symlink check from
> working with this patchset.  This will be fixed in the next release.

So we will need to add a configure check either for the latest
libarchive or for this fix.

A