Re: writability of directories in distributions

[Jim Meyering]

Harlan Stenn wrote:
> I just saw a patch go by about changing the perms on directories in
> distribution tarballs.
>
> I'm a fan of 775 myself (ok, I really prefer 2775).
>
> But I can see that some would prefer 777, and others would prefer 755.
>
> The other issue, as I recall, has to do with whether or not 'root' is
> doing the unpacking.
>
> While there is something to be said for letting the package maintainer
> make this choice, there is also clearly something to be said for letting
> the recipient make the choice.

IMHO, avoiding confusion and risks when root (however unguided) untars
such an archive is more important.

> I suspect that leaving the current behavior alone will irritate some,
> and changing the current behavior will irritate others.

People who will be irritated by such a change should already
be accustomed to dealing with the non-777-perm directories from
numerous other sources.  Just a quick sampling: perl, git,
and the linux kernel have 0755 directories in their tarballs,
as well as at least a few of the tarballs I checked in the
BSD ports/distfiles/.