Re: removing "su" from coreutils [Re: Fwd: [PULL] su

[Pádraig Brady]

On 05/24/2012 02:21 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: [PULL] su
>> Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 14:58:01 +0200
>> From: Ludwig Nussel <address@hidden>
>> To: address@hidden
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> coreutils isn't really interested in maintaining su anymore.
>> Distributions have to add custom patches to fix bugs and add
>> features. The worst offender is probably the pam patch. Fortunately
>> we managed to sync the patch between openSUSE and Fedora meanwhile.
>> Over time the risk that the patches divert again increases though.
>> Since util-linux now contains a common login program it looks like a
>> good new home for su too.
>>
>> To integrate su into util-linux I've extracted the history of the su
>> program until the last GPLv2 version (they've changed to GPLv3
>> meanwhile) from coreutils' git and merged it with util-linux.
>> Then I've added the patches used in Fedora and openSUSE and fixed the
>> files to actually build.
>>
>> You can find the result in branch su-v1 (ff6b15d) at
>> address@hidden:lnussel/util-linux.git
>>
>> I've also filed a pull request on github:
>> https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/pull/10
>>
>> Originally I had planned to implement separate tty allocation for
>> the child program on top of that to get rid of the evil setsid
>> patch. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought though. The
>> change would be too massive to backport anyways I guess. So the next
>> step would be to rip out the non-pam legacy stuff and clean up the code
>> to make it readable again.
> 
> Hi Pádraig,
> 
> Thanks for forwarding that.
> 
> I would like to remove su.c, if/when possible from coreutils.
> The last time I proposed that, the Hurd was mentioned as a
> reason not to, since they relied on the su from coreutils.
> 
> Is that still the case, and if so, can you (the Hurd) switch
> to the one from util-linux?
> 

Well it's not clear cut to me, given that su
isn't really Linux specific.

Note Fedora and Suse use su from coreutils
while debian use their own:
http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/

Note also Fedora has `runuser` which is based on su:
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob;f=coreutils-8.7-runuser.patch;hb=HEAD

There was also a very related request for
`runuser` like functionality to be generally available:
http://bugs.gnu.org/8700

It's probably worth bringing runuser with su,
no matter where they end up.

cheers,
Pádraig.