[tahoe-dev] Installation on Mac

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Mark Berger <mjberger at stanford.edu> wrote:
> I can confirm that 'python setup.py build' wiill not run on OSX 10.8 without
> sudo. The error message is "error: src/allmydata/_version.py: Permission
> denied".

This means that the file ./src/allmydata/_version.py was created by a
process that was running as root. Most likely, that process was an
earlier run of "sudo python setup.py build"! So, if you hadn't done
that in the first place, then "python setup.py build" without sudo
would probably work now. ☺

Hm, I wonder if it would be worth adding a test in setup.py for
whether it is running with elevated privileges, and if so exit out
with an error message saying "You shouldn't be using sudo or root to
build Tahoe-LAFS — that will probably lead to problems later. If you
are actually a unix expert and you know what you are doing, then feel
free to comment out this test and proceed."…

Sigh, sounds wrong, but I'm not sure what is right! Maybe just edit
https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst
on the line that says "python setup.py build", and add a note that
says "Do *not* use 'sudo' or root privileges for this step. If you do,
it will appear to work, but then may later cause other steps to
fail.".

Something like that. Still seems wrong. This packaging/building stuff
is a huge pain, and I still stubbornly refuse to accept the standard
approach that only experts who understand all the ins and outs are
going to be able to build it themselves and everyone else will have to
find an expert to rely on to give them prebuilt packages.

--Z