Re: [coreutils] [patch] Re: Install enhancement request: capabilities

[Pádraig Brady]

On 04/11/10 11:08, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Thanks for the patch!
> I think the feature is worth it.
> 
> Currently install does not preserve xattrs
> and so looses any previous capabilities
> associated with a file.
> 
> In any case, capabilities don't need to be implemented
> using xattrs, and might not be on tmpfs on Linux
> for example when support is eventually added there.
> 
> One tricky thing I noticed with capabilities,
> is that one needs to do after setting any ownership,
> which you do correctly in the patch.

On the other hand one can always just call
`setcap` after `install` for the few files that require it.
Having `install` support it means you don't need a separate
setcap util, but it also means that one can't just
grep for "setcap" in a bunch of rpms for example
to see what capabilities are set on the system.
Also using the `setcap` util is slightly more flexible
in failure modes (optionally failing if all/some/none are set)

So I'm back to 55:45 against this one.

cheers,
Pádraig.