[tex-live] Permission bits of installed packages

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu Mar 12 23:02:06 CET 2015


Hi Mohammad,

          /usr/bin/mkdir -p '/usr/local/etc'

BTW, that mkdir will/should respect umask if the dir doesn't happen to
exist already.

      /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 astmkprof.conf '/usr/local/etc'

I actually find it a bug, and always have, that the default for
INSTALL_DATA and INSTALL_EXEC forces installation with particular
permissions.  However, I was overruled some 30 years ago and don't
expect it to change now :).

    why does Tex live rely on it?

Alternatively, a valid question to my mind is why other programs ignore
umask.

Aside from that -- by default, we install a whole tree from scratch
(/usr/local/texlive/YYYY), rather than putting new pieces into an
existing tree (/usr/local in the case of autoconf).  Furthermore, we do
not recommend, let alone require, that people install TL as root.  This
makes it all the more critical, to my mind, to respect users' settings.

Both behaviors have reasonable arguments.  Don't expect unification any
time soon, if ever.

k


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