[Rd] Patch idea: an environment variable for setting the user ID

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Another thing to consider if one wants to anonymize the build is the
UID/GID of the files in the tarball.  So there might be a need for a
R_BUILD_UID and R_BUILD_GID, e.g. by setting those to 32767
("nobody").

/Henrik

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 9:25 AM Will L <will.landau using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Kurt.
>
> I think I now have enough time to write a patch. What are the steps? I have
> read https://www.r-project.org/bugs.html#how-to-submit-patches but I do not
> seem to have permission to create a Bugzilla account at
> https://bugs.r-project.org/bugzilla/.
>
> Will
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 2:46 AM Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik using wu.ac.at> wrote:
>
> > >>>>> Will L writes:
> >
> > > To R-devel,
> > > In `R CMD build`, the ID of the user is automatically inserted into the
> > > DESCRIPTION file, e.g.
> >
> > > Packaged: 2018-11-06 14:01:50 UTC; <MY USER ID>
> >
> >
> > > This is problematic for those of us who work in corporate settings. We
> > must
> > > not divulge our user IDs in the packages we develop and release.
> >
> > > Jim Hester pointed out that these two lines in
> > > `add_build_stamp_to_description_file()`
> > > <
> > https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/521c90a175d67475b9f1b43d7ae68bc48062d8e6/src/library/tools/R/build.R#L170-L171
> > >
> > > are responsible. Could we consider his suggestion of using an optional
> > > environment variable to overwrite the default behavior?
> >
> > > user <- Sys.getenv("R_BUILD_USERNAME")
> > > if (!nzchar(user)) user <- Sys.info()["user"]
> > > if(user == "unknown") user <- Sys.getenv("LOGNAME")
> >
> > Yep, something along these lines should be possible.
> > R_BUILD_USER or R_BUILD_LOGNAME may seem more natural though ...
> >
> > Best
> > -k
> >
> >
> >
> > > Will Landau
> > > --
> > > wlandau.github.io
> > > linkedin.com/in/wlandau
> > > github.com/wlandau
> >
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> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> wlandau.github.io
> linkedin.com/in/wlandau
> github.com/wlandau
>
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