%ghost .pyo

[Jeff Pitman]

On Thursday 23 December 2004 00:43, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> If you have set up root to do something nonstandard like running
> python in optimized byte comilation mode is the onus also on you to
> create the pyos so you can create tripwire hashes?  (Or set /usr ro
> or [untested] an SELinux context to keep pyo's from being written?)

rpmlint comes to mind as "something nonstandard".  If you so happen to 
run it has root, of course.  To truly be FHS-compliant, yes, the burden 
is on an integrator or user to keep Python from writing to /usr.  From 
FHS v2.3:
"""
/usr is the second major section of the filesystem. /usr is shareable, 
read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between 
various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to. Any information 
that is host-specific or varies with time is stored elsewhere.
"""

Technically pyo, when auto-generated by Python during execution, should 
be written under /var.  One could then create a system to allow 
user-executed pythons to generate pyo for each other based on group 
permissions.  This would be especially cool if pyo actually provided a 
significant optimization besides a minor startup boost.

Since Python is cross-platform, moving things around like that would be 
too platform specific and most likely rejected.  Interestingly enough a 
related RFE was filed a few years back:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=588756&group_id=5470&atid=355470

So, to %ghost or not to %ghost, that is the question! 

-- 
-jeff