Ports that touch the filesystem before install

[Joe Marcus Clarke]

On 6/6/11 2:35 AM, Chris Rees wrote:
> On 5 June 2011 23:44, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at marcuscom.com> wrote:
>> On 6/5/11 4:22 AM, Chris Rees wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I know Tinderbox checks whether something's touched the filesystem by
>>> looking at the state before and after...
>>>
>>> which leads to cases like Mailman which touch the filesystem during
>>> configure and then compensate (with a comment to say this is what it's
>>> doing!) by removing the directory created... These are now causing
>>> problems for me while I convert them to use USERS [1].
>>>
>>> Clearly this is unacceptable??
>>>
>>> Perhaps we could set some options on the nullfs mount to make all but
>>> WRKDIR read-only until the install phase? This should weed out the
>>> ports that do that!
>>>
>>> It's also biting me with qmail at the moment :(
>>>
>>> Anyone have any better ideas, or tell me it's not a problem?
>>
>> I don't understand what you're asking for.  Tinderbox is already
>> checking for ports that touch the file system inappropriately (show me
>> on this doll where the port touched you).
>>
>> I'm not clear what you feel is broken and why making the mounted FS
>> read-only would fix this.
>>
> 
> For example, have a look at the pre-configure and post-configure
> targets of mailman [1,2 - create home directory in pre-install
> --called at pre-configure].
> 
> I'm not saying Tinderbox is broken, I'm just saying that it can be
> fooled by nasty little tricks like the post-configure target... It's
> still unacceptable (IMO) to be creating  dirs in /usr/local and
> deleting them before it notices!

Agreed.  The real fix should be mailman.  It should be hacked _not_ to
touch the file system before install.

Joe


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