Set installation directory to Read-write ?
lazarus / 1-Linux

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martinus · 2009-11-18 15:53

Hi,

I have installed 0.9.28.2 on Ubuntu 9.04, using Synaptics. It looked
fine, but it was impossible to install any package and to recompile
lazarus.

I eventually found that it can work properly only after setting a
read-write access to the installation folder ( /usr/lib/lazarus/...)
and it's sub-folders.

It is really not obvious for beginners to lazarus, and the errors
displayed was not at all suggesting this problem.

Is it possible, in the next releases :
To display a warning in the .deb packageOr set this directory read-
write during the installationOr display an error message before trying
to rebuild, if no file can be written in the install directoryOr, the
best IMHO, if possible, to make this not necessary !
This will really help beginners !
Regards,

Martinus

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Troodon · 2009-11-18 16:12

It is not necessary to change directory permissions to install new
components.

As components are statically built into the Lazarus IDE, installing a
new component entails making a change to the main application.
Installing (and making changes to) applications on Linux is an admin
task, therefore you need superuser (root) privileges to do it.

On Ubuntu Linux, open a terminal window and type "sudo startlazarus".
That will launch lazarus as superuser and will allow you to install
new components. When finished, close Lazarus and the Terminal window
and relaunch Lazarus as usual, from the menu.

The real potential issue here is that the default Lazarus "Directory
for building test projects" for all users on Linux is /tmp. If a
superuser saves/builds projects in /tmp then regular users cannot
delete those files. It would be better if the default "Directory for
building test projects" were $HOME/tmp/ instead of /tmp.