Go HomeDir reads /etc/passwd, not $HOME

elopio · November 15, 2017, 2:54pm

For the record, upstream was very nice here and he patched the source code to first search for $HOME:

ipfs/ipfs-cluster/blob/a1f1ef15d87886e0e6d92e9e81530802f4de9b45/ipfs-cluster-service/main.go#L123


)
func init() {
	// Set the right commit. The only way I could make this work
	ipfscluster.Commit = commit
	// We try guessing user's home from the HOME variable. This
	// allows HOME hacks for things like Snapcraft builds. HOME
	// should be set in all UNIX by the OS. Alternatively, we fall back to
	// usr.HomeDir (which should work on Windows etc.).
	home := os.Getenv("HOME")
	if home == "" {
		usr, err := user.Current()
		if err != nil {
			panic(fmt.Sprintf("cannot get current user: %s", err))
		}
		home = usr.HomeDir
	}
	DefaultPath = filepath.Join(home, ".ipfs-cluster")
}

So, I guess that an option would be to accept that snaps are not fully transparent, for cases like this, and document best practices for upstreams to adjust their code to work with snaps.

Another such case that comes to mind is bitcoin, that requires a patch to save the blockchain to $SNAP_USER_COMMON instead of $SNAP_USER_DATA. This is not transparent because upstreams that want to save data will just do throw everything in $HOME; but we are introducing the concept of versioned and unversioned home, and they would have to adjust their source code to use it correctly.