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[K-user] installing K using sudo considered harmful

From: David Lazar <lazar6 AT illinois.edu>
To: k-user AT cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: [K-user] installing K using sudo considered harmful
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:32:55 -0600
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Hi all,

There have been several frustrations lately due to users attempting to
install K as root. I've added a note to the INSTALL file which
discourages users from attempting to build/install K as root or using
sudo.

There are several reasons why users shouldn't use or install our
software as root:

1) Our software is experimental; you shouldn't trust it with root access.

2) sudo interacts with the environment in unexpected ways, causing our
Makefiles to fail.

3) It is harder to "uninstall" something if it's been installed as root.

Furthermore, building/installing K does not create any files outside
of $K_BASE except for ~/.cabal and ~/.ghc, which store Haskell
dependencies once they're compiled. All of the tools for interacting
with K live in $K_BASE/core; they are not copied elsewhere during
installation.

Really, you should only trust your package manager with root.
Otherwise, install software into your home directory.

Cheers,
David

[K-user] installing K using sudo considered harmful, David Lazar, 02/27/2012