Please REVERSE the change you made to make the default rootcommand be
`eval'.
Please DO NOT ATTEMPT to make `su -c' work as a gain-root-command. It
is IMPOSSIBLE to produce a correct implementation which works with
both `su -c' and also with `really', `sudo', `super', &c.
This is because `su -c' expects the command and all its arguments as a
shell expression whereas all the rest expect the command and its
arguments as separate arguments to themselves.
Please see the manpage for dpkg-buildpackage and make sure that it
implements what the manpage in 1.4.0 says:
-rgain-root-command
When dpkg-buildpackage needs to execute part of the
build process as root, it prefixes the command it
executes with gain-root-command if one has been
specified. gain-root-command should be the name of
a program on the PATH and will get as arguments the
name of the real command to run and the arguments
it should take. gain-root-command should not con-
tain spaces or any other shell metacharacters.
gain-root-command might typically be sudo, super or
really. su is not suitable, since it requires a -c
option to run a command and even then it can only
invoke the user's shell with -c instead of passing
arguments individually to the command to be run.
There are several solutions that wouldn't necessarily break anything:
1. Write a wrapper script for `su' which does shell-quoting &c, so
that it can be used like really, sudo and super but uses su -c
internally. Getting this right so that it works even if the arguments
have funny characters in is hard, but it happens that dpkg-source
doesn't usually pass such arguments so you're probably OK with this
application. However, don't distribute the script unless you've got
it right. dpkg-buildpackage might at some point in the future build
packages with arguments as specified.
2. Make su have an option to run a command specified with its
arguments in separate arguments, using exec directly rather than
"<user's-shell> -c". You'd have to make sure that the user's shell
was in /etc/shells for this to be safe.
3. Switch from using su to using something else.
4. Make dpkg-buildpackage have a different style of -r option which
does what you want. This will quickly turn dpkg-buildpackage into a
mess, so please don't do it.
I do not have time to have a flamewar about this. Bruce and everyone
else, please can you ensure that my instructions are carried out. If
someone thinks that I'm making a mistake with this I want them to
convince me of it BEFORE acting, because it seems that there is so
much misunderstanding here.
Thanks,
Ian.
