[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: 2.1.1 under 10.1 [was Python package maker for OS X Installer.app]

[Robert Abernathy]

On Monday, November 12, 2001, at 06:57 AM, Jack Jansen wrote:

>> Hi Jack,
>>
>> 	My naive guess is that folks try "make install", and when that
>> fails (since "normal" users aren't allowed to create directories in the
>> default area: /usr/local/...) they decide to run the install as root so
>> that it will be allowed. Isn't this what most folks do on most unixish
>> systems anyway? Is there some security problem with this?
>
> Bingo! I knew that I knew why people did this, but I had forgotten. 
> I'll add a
> note to the README that people just do the "sudo mkdir/sudo chown" and 
> then a
> plain make install.
> --
>
As a unix type program on a mac, I install python into /usr/local.  All 
of the files under
this directory are and should be owned by root.  For the situation of a 
single user, if
they don't want to install as root, they could do a local install in ~/ 
somewhere and this
wouldn't be an issue.  If I were installing a graphical OS Xish version 
of python, I'd
put it in /Applications.  All of the files that go there are still owned 
by root.

Is there a reason I wouldn't want to install the python files as owned 
by root?