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

[Yaron Sheffer]

Hi Jim, Pádraig,

I still don't see the logic of not including capabilities in the 
"install" feature set. We could use chmod and chown separately, too. But 
still, setting owner/group and mode are a core functionality of this 
utility. Similarly, if we think that POSIX capabilities are important 
(see e.g. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RemoveSETUID), we 
should make their use as easy and natural as possible. For me that means 
at the minimum support in install, tar (and derived packaging tools) and 
possibly ls.

Thanks,
    Yaron

On 11/04/2010 03:22 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> > it's somewhat cleaner to have all the security-critical settings in
> > one place: owner, group, permissions, capabilities (and grep for "-P"
> > or "--capabilities"...). Plus you can rely on "install" to always be
> > there, which I don't think is true for "setcap".
> Thanks for the patch.
> However, since that's the only benefit I see (setcap may not be installed),
> I'm 60:40 against.  If you find some other install program with this
> feature, that would strengthen the case for adding the option here.