Suppress "running pip install with root privileges" warning in RPM macros?

[Miro Hrončok]

Hello Python packagers.

Our pip has a custom patch that warns if "pip install" is run as root 
(emit-a-warning-when-running-with-root-privileges.patch). That I think is a good 
idea to have, as many users will still find "sudo pip install" instructions on 
the Internet and they can potentially nuke their system.

What I realized today is that this warning is visible when we use pip during 
packaging of rpm packages (e.g. with %pyproject_install):

+ /usr/bin/python3 -m pip install --root 
/builddir/build/BUILDROOT/python-pytest-4.4.2-0.fc33.x86_64 --no-deps 
--disable-pip-version-check --progress-bar off --verbose --ignore-installed 
--no-warn-script-location --no-index --no-cache-dir --find-links 
pyproject-wheeldir pytest==4.4.2
WARNING: Running pip install with root privileges is generally not a good idea. 
Try `python3 -m pip install --user` instead.
...

It would be nice if we were able to suppress this warning.

There are several options to handle this I could brainstorm myself:

1) Add a custom --no-warn-root-privileges option and use it in our macros. This 
is a problem because we are introducing downstream only API. When others use 
this flag with upstream pip, it fails.

2) Hide the warning when $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is set. This sounds good for our macro 
invocations, however it would also hide the warning when using naïve "pip 
install foo" in spec. We might want to keep the warning in such cases.

3) Introduce an environment variable (e.g. PIP_NOWARN_ROOT) and set it from our 
macros. Like (1), this adds a new API, however with upstream pip, it "simply" 
does nothing.

4) Introduce our warning upstream, but make it opt-in only. Have 
--warn-root-privileges / --no-warn-root-privileges options. In Fedora, only 
patch the default value. (We could also propose our defaults upstream, but IIRC 
there were reservation when we tried to upstream this patch.) IMHO This might be 
the best approach, but arguably also the most complex one.

5) Hide the warning when --root is set. When using "sudo pip install" with 
custom --root, users are more likely to do it on purpose and it would remove the 
warning in all our macros without a need to touch them. IMHO This solution has 
the best effort/gain ratio.

What do you think?

[Filipe Laíns]

On Tue, 2020-07-07 at 19:54 +0200, Miro Hrončok wrote:
*snip*
> What do you think?
>
> -- 
> Miro Hrončok
> --
> Phone: [phone]
> IRC: mhroncok

I am not really a Fedora packager but 5) seems the best option to me.
Like you said, people setting --root are very likely doing it on
purpose. There are also a few tools that might use --root, and I
wouldn't want to add a fedora specific API in the upstream.
This behavior could also be extended to --prefix.

Cheers,
Filipe Laíns

[Petr Viktorin]

On 2020-07-07 19:54, Miro Hrončok wrote:
> Add a custom --no-warn-root-privileges option
> Hide the warning when $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is set.
> Introduce an environment variable (e.g. PIP_NOWARN_ROOT)
> Introduce our warning upstream, but make it opt-in only.
> Hide the warning when --root is set.
>
> What do you think?

I like option 5 as well.
It's just a warning, not an error, because there are cases where you 
"know what you're doing", such as containers/VMs, where "sudo pip" may 
be appropriate. All uses of --root that come to my mind are such cases.

Users who follow tutorials without "knowing what they're doing" are very 
unlikely to use --root.

[Lumir Balhar]

I was curious how hard it'd be to implement this and it turned out to be 
very simple so I've prepared a PR: 
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/python-pip/pull-request/67

Lumír

On 7/9/20 1:48 PM, Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 2020-07-07 19:54, Miro Hrončok wrote:
> > Add a custom --no-warn-root-privileges option
> > Hide the warning when $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is set.
> > Introduce an environment variable (e.g. PIP_NOWARN_ROOT)
> > Introduce our warning upstream, but make it opt-in only.
> > Hide the warning when --root is set.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> I like option 5 as well.
> It's just a warning, not an error, because there are cases where you 
> "know what you're doing", such as containers/VMs, where "sudo pip" may 
> be appropriate. All uses of --root that come to my mind are such cases.
>
> Users who follow tutorials without "knowing what they're doing" are 
> very unlikely to use --root.
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[Miro Hrončok]

On 10. 07. 20 8:21, Lumir Balhar wrote:
> I was curious how hard it'd be to implement this and it turned out to be very 
> simple so I've prepared a PR: 
> https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/python-pip/pull-request/67

Thank You, Lumír.

I've merged and built it.