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I am not too fond of this design for reasons of privilege separation and FHS-alignment, but can accept it as most Homebrew users don't have their Macintosh comp

by selkin 1y ago

I am not too fond of this design for reasons of privilege separation and FHS-alignment, but can accept it as most Homebrew users don't have their Macintosh computers used by multiple people.

frollogaston 1y ago
My machine is single-user, problem is some things require root. Maybe they shouldn't according to Homebrew's stance on permissions, but idk, I'm working with what I've got.
- selkin 1y ago
  Can you give a concrete example? I know why certain software has be run with root privileges, but it's a bit hard for me to come with a reasonable scenario where a software would fail to run properly when installed to a directory that is owned by the same non-root user that launches that software.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    The symptom was something like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16432071/how-to-fix-homebrew-permissions https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16432071/how-to-fix-home... , which btw has a terrible accepted answer. I forget the root cause (no pun intended), possibly some bad interaction with stuff I installed outside of Homebrew. It's also possible I did something wrong, but even then there's something to be said about so many users having the same problem uniquely with Homebrew. Lemme try to repro again when I'm home.
    - agos 1y ago
      this kind of errors are quite common with Homebrew in my experience. if you did anything "wrong", then it's something really easy to do wrong which lots of other (me included) have done wrong at some point, and that the software should help to prevent
      - frollogaston 1y ago
        Digging through it more, it seems like Homebrew didn't play nice with anything else that used that dir. Maybe it's less of a problem now that it installs to /opt/homebrew, but I imagine there are still times Homebrew needs to place files in root-owned dirs or next to them. This issue is also brought up in the Github commit posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43766371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43766371 "I wouldn't worry about it not being root. We don't install anything base enough for it to be a concern (unlike MacPorts or Fink)."
JimDabell 1y ago
My Macs aren’t used by multiple people but they are multi-user systems. At minimum I have work and personal accounts, often project-specific accounts too. Homebrew is really bad at this and I was hoping anything that came along to replace it would do better. All the similar tools like APT etc. can handle this, it’s such a pain that Homebrew makes it difficult.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  And it's multi-user in a way even if you only have one account, cause the other account is root, and some stuff besides Homebrew will install as root.

by selkin 1y ago

I am not too fond of this design for reasons of privilege separation and FHS-alignment, but can accept it as most Homebrew users don't have their Macintosh computers used by multiple people.

frollogaston 1y ago

My machine is single-user, problem is some things require root. Maybe they shouldn't according to Homebrew's stance on permissions, but idk, I'm working with what I've got.

selkin 1y ago
Can you give a concrete example? I know why certain software has be run with root privileges, but it's a bit hard for me to come with a reasonable scenario where a software would fail to run properly when installed to a directory that is owned by the same non-root user that launches that software.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  The symptom was something like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16432071/how-to-fix-homebrew-permissions https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16432071/how-to-fix-home... , which btw has a terrible accepted answer. I forget the root cause (no pun intended), possibly some bad interaction with stuff I installed outside of Homebrew. It's also possible I did something wrong, but even then there's something to be said about so many users having the same problem uniquely with Homebrew. Lemme try to repro again when I'm home.
  - agos 1y ago
    this kind of errors are quite common with Homebrew in my experience. if you did anything "wrong", then it's something really easy to do wrong which lots of other (me included) have done wrong at some point, and that the software should help to prevent
    - frollogaston 1y ago
      Digging through it more, it seems like Homebrew didn't play nice with anything else that used that dir. Maybe it's less of a problem now that it installs to /opt/homebrew, but I imagine there are still times Homebrew needs to place files in root-owned dirs or next to them. This issue is also brought up in the Github commit posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43766371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43766371 "I wouldn't worry about it not being root. We don't install anything base enough for it to be a concern (unlike MacPorts or Fink)."

JimDabell 1y ago

My Macs aren’t used by multiple people but they are multi-user systems. At minimum I have work and personal accounts, often project-specific accounts too. Homebrew is really bad at this and I was hoping anything that came along to replace it would do better. All the similar tools like APT etc. can handle this, it’s such a pain that Homebrew makes it difficult.

frollogaston 1y ago
And it's multi-user in a way even if you only have one account, cause the other account is root, and some stuff besides Homebrew will install as root.