[gentoo-dev] Non-root emerges

[Chris L. Mason]

Hi all,

I've checked the documentation and man pages and couldn't find what I
was looking for.  If I've missed something, please point me in the
right direction.

I've been trying to figure out if it is possible to have all emerges
(especially the builds) to be done as a non-root user, and have the
process call sudo (or similar) only for the final merge.  All
downloading, unpacking, compiling and installing to the fake target
should be doable without root permissions.  So, you'd just need to be
in the portage group, and be configured in sudo.

This is similar to what is possible in OpenBSD, with a setting in
/etc/mk.conf.  This allows regular users to build ports, or even the
whole system.  Debian allows something similar using fakeroot, which
allows non-root users to build packages.  Probably the OpenBSD
approach would work best for gentoo.  A similar setting could be added
to make.conf to indicate how to gain root permissions (i.e. by calling
sudo, or something else.)

This is desirable both for security reasons and just to avoid
accidentally trashing the system because of a broken build script, for
example.

If this currently possible, and if not, what do people think?  If
there's no major obections or issues, I'd be happy to open a bug.

Thanks,


Chris

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