[Gambas-user] Problem compiling trunk on Debian wheezy

[Tobias Boege]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2014, rolf wrote:
> Hi Karl
> 
> > > > why do you do it all as root ?
> > >
> > > It should become a system wide installation. I allways compile programs
> > > everybody should use on this computer as admin.
> > >
> > > Rolf
> >
> > Salut Rolf,
> >
> > sudo/su make install does that
> 
> First of all I use Debian not Ubuntu so I sudo is not configured out of the 
> box.
> 
> And what is the difference between working as root - especially if root is 
> requiered for installing the needed program packets - and do it with sudo?
> 

The differences between sudo and su is nothing of interest here. The point
is that you should not compile as root at all (no matter how you prefer to
become root). It's for the same reason as "why shouldn't I run my browser
as root" or "why shouldn't I run my calculator as root": because having a
process do things with root privileges is per se dangerous and you can
perfectly do it without root privileges. Configure and compile Gambas as a
regular user and just install as root to the proper (system-wide) places.

I myself wouldn't risk a scenario like the one which this guy[0] describes
and you can't deny that those configure scripts, if you take a look at them,
do some really peculiar stuff... Same goes for the Makefiles generated.

Regards,
Tobi

[0] http://cboard.cprogramming.com/linux-programming/42383-never-compile-root.html

-- 
"There's an old saying: Don't change anything... ever!" -- Mr. Monk