Re: Adding a --preserve= option to install

[Pádraig Brady]

On 06/05/2013 10:23 PM, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm writing about an issue that came up in Gentoo wrt coreutil's install [1]. 
>  There we are working on moving PaX security markings [2] from our systems' 
> ELF program headers to an extended attribute field named "user.pax.flags".  
> The advantage of leaving the markings in the ELF the way we had it is that 
> they always travel with the executables/libraries, but the disadvantage is 
> that it makes our ELF objects less in line with what you get on other linux 
> distros with all the issues that come with that.
> 
> The problem we encountered is that for some packages, we need to do the xattr 
> pax markings *before* running install in our package management system.  For 
> example we need to mark python to run correctly under a kernel enforcing PaX. 
>  But we need to mark it before running tests and therefore before install.
> 
> The problem comes because coreutil's install does not have a --preserve= 
> option like cp does.  It does have --preserve-context for SELinux but not a 
> more general preserve option for extended attributes.  In many ways, xattr 
> PaX markings follow the same design principles as SELinux security labels.
> 
> I'd like to propose adding a --preserve= to install.  Comments?
> 
> 
> Ref.
> [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470660
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaX
> 

It's a pity that install doesn't have --preserve=
rather than --preserve-context
If we added --preserve= we'd also have to
consider/doc consequences for --compare
I don't suppose you could use `cp`
rather than `install` for this use case?

cheers,
Pádraig.