Running GCC as root (was Re: [PATCH - ping] Don't unlink /dev/null on darwin)

[Marcin Dalecki]

On 2005-02-14, at 20:03, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>
> Where I'm coming from is, this (running gcc as root) *was* just bad
> practice, and/or a matter of site policy, up till someone found a
> scenario where a legitimate invocation caused breakage when run as
> root -- and not breakage that we have any way of fixing, since it
> boils down to a bug in a vendor assembler.  At that point it becomes
> something that should be disallowed, IMO.

You logic is incomplete. If you intend to play such policy rules on 
whatever
owners of a system should be able to do in a perfectly valid account 
otherwise -
better design on os without a root account at all. Because this is where
consequent thinking ends up. Unless not please better remain permissive 
about
what people can and what people can't do in reasonable ways. And BTW> 
running
as root is sometimes just a  common way to avoid the need for active 
person
interaction during whole system bootstrap builds. Or a convenience for 
interaction
during low level system programming. Many commands needed for such a 
thing don't work
properly without root permissions or only with major hassles. Heck even 
doing simple
web stuff where I have to feed some html user I go frequent enough just 
for root.
Yes no question it's just a convenience but it is a valuable one!