René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Remove need for running test suite as root","articleBody":"After the `bspatch` program applies a delta to *FILE1* to produce *FILE2*, it runs `chmod(2)` and `chown(2)` to set permissions and ownership for *FILE2* according to the metadata in the delta file.\r\n\r\nThis behavior is a convenience for some use cases. For example, consumers of the delta files (like `swupd` from [swupd-client](https://github.com/clearlinux/swupd-client)) do not have to bother running the ownership/permission modifications on *FILE2* after an update.\r\n\r\nBut from a testing perspective, requiring root privileges to apply delta files is an inconvenience when those delta files specify to change ownership to an arbitrary user ID and group ID, and the user running the test suite might lack privileges to carry out the operation.\r\n\r\nTo sidestep the root requirement, it would be nice to either make the `chmod(2)` and `chown(2)` calls optional in some way, or add a mechanism to hotpatch delta files on-the-fly to set the user/group ID to the effective user/group ID of the calling process, specifically for the test suite.","author":{"url":"https://github.com/phmccarty","@type":"Person","name":"phmccarty"},"datePublished":"2021-02-04T07:31:41.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":0},"url":"https://github.com/15/bsdiff/issues/15"}