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>it is a dangerous package manager To go along with this theme, I must ask: Does homebrew do any isolation when building from source? Chroots, separate proce

>it is a dangerous package manager To go along with this theme, I must ask: Does homebrew do any isolation when building from source? Chroots, separate process namespaces, etc. >All so you can install it without sudo. This is actually a really great feature. I work on a package manager called Guix, which also allows for unprivileged package management. It's one of my favorite features. You and I could have user accounts on the same machine and use different versions of the same application without conflict. Of course, I don't know what the security story is for Homebrew, but it doesn't look to be better than average. We take security very seriously with Guix, to the point that we are seeking things like bit-for-bit reproducible builds.

SwellJoe 12y ago
"Does homebrew do any isolation when building from source? Chroots, separate process namespaces, etc." No. This is why they install as the user. "For security", you see. I agree that non-root installs are a useful feature for some scenarios. But, the problem with that for servers is you need to be able to start all of your services as different users. That's really not optional. How you get there doesn't really matter, to me, but dpkg and RPM have long had it solved. I've looked at Guix and Nix, and find them neat. I'm kind of a package management nerd (and I judge all operating systems by their package management story...Windows and Mac OS X are unacceptable, most modern Linuxes are pretty pretty good, FreeBSD is getting better). I'm not sure I'm willing to make all of the tradeoffs and move onto such a foreign system layout, but it's on my radar.
- Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 12y ago
  > But, the problem with that for servers is you need to be able to start all of your services as different users. That's really not optional. Anything with an attack surface also must not be able to replace its own binaries/code. Otherwise a one-time exploit is instantly updated to a permanent infection.

SwellJoe 12y ago

"Does homebrew do any isolation when building from source? Chroots, separate process namespaces, etc." No. This is why they install as the user. "For security", you see. I agree that non-root installs are a useful feature for some scenarios. But, the problem with that for servers is you need to be able to start all of your services as different users. That's really not optional. How you get there doesn't really matter, to me, but dpkg and RPM have long had it solved. I've looked at Guix and Nix, and find them neat. I'm kind of a package management nerd (and I judge all operating systems by their package management story...Windows and Mac OS X are unacceptable, most modern Linuxes are pretty pretty good, FreeBSD is getting better). I'm not sure I'm willing to make all of the tradeoffs and move onto such a foreign system layout, but it's on my radar.

Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd 12y ago
> But, the problem with that for servers is you need to be able to start all of your services as different users. That's really not optional. Anything with an attack surface also must not be able to replace its own binaries/code. Otherwise a one-time exploit is instantly updated to a permanent infection.