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Issue #172 

Previously, `cheat` would exit if run by `root`. The rationale was:

If `cheat` was run by an unprivileged user (`chris`, for example), the
`$DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR` would default to `/home/chris/.cheat`. If cheat was
run via `sudo`, however, the `$DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR` would suddenly be
`/root/.cheat`.

Presuming that those individual user cheat dirs actually contained cheat
sheets, this could cause confusion, because cheat sheets accessible to
one user (`chris`) would not be accessible to the other (`root`). Thus,
cheatsheets would appear and disappear, depending on which user was
running `cheat`. (This would only be an issue, of course, for cheat
sheets that existed within the respective users' cheat dirs. System-wide
cheat sheets would be unaffected.)

`cheat` was thus programmed to gracefully fail when run as `root` to
prevent that possible confusion.

However, I'm backing away from that reasoning, because:

1. It's causing a headache for real users who'd like to run `cheat` as
root

2. Other venerable programs (`vim`, etc.) suffer from the same problem,
but nobody seems to mind enough to do anything about it. Thus, I suppose
the laissez-faire approach is essentially the sanctioned "solution" to
this problem.

3. Users sufficently troubled by this confusion may rememdy the problem
manually by setting environment variables (`$DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR`, etc.)

Thus, `cheat` no longer complains if run by `root`.

Version-bumped to 2.1.0.
This commit is contained in:
Chris Lane 2014-08-06 21:39:10 -04:00
parent 3e287e62b8
commit e391cf2f01
1 changed files with 0 additions and 6 deletions
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6
cheat/sheets.py
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@ -12,12 +12,6 @@ cheats = {}
def default_path(): def default_path():
""" Returns the default cheatsheet path """ """ Returns the default cheatsheet path """
# the default path becomes confused when cheat is run as root, so fail
# under those circumstances. (There is no good reason to need to run cheat
# as root.)
if os.name != 'nt' and os.geteuid() == 0:
die('Please do not run this application as root.');
# determine the default cheatsheet dir # determine the default cheatsheet dir
default_sheets_dir = os.environ.get('DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR') or os.path.join(os.path.expanduser('~'), '.cheat') default_sheets_dir = os.environ.get('DEFAULT_CHEAT_DIR') or os.path.join(os.path.expanduser('~'), '.cheat')