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

[Thomas Schwinge]

Hi!

CCing debian-hurd FYI.


On Thu, 24 May 2012 15:21:01 +0200, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> 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.

> 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?

Yes, that appears to be fine -- despite its name, we're using a lot of
executables provided by util-linux.

I'll test the branch in the lnussel repository and report back.


Grüße,
 Thomas

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