Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: Annoyance building python from source
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:16:17 -0800
Organization: None to speak of
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <87o6ngvc32.fsf@example.invalid>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Injection-Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2025 04:16:19 +0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="f64ba1fc77f9b07548a2a24ef633fb8e"; logging-data="1619550"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19ZviSWW54tHTgpLGGYTL1h"
User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:cKqPUnTUbp4TsjfDBaQPhCFt3io= sha1:n8yulL3q7LZipphKWt+Mhv6SWh8=
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:197655

When I build Python from source, the "sudo make install" step
creates root-owned files in the build directory.  I have not seen
this while building other open-source packages from source.

Is there a way to avoid this, so no root-owned files are creates
other than under the target installation directory?

The details:

I typically build Python from a cloned git directory.  The steps
(leaving out some irrelevant details) are:

    git clone https://github.com/python/cpython
    cd cpython
    git switch -d VERSION
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install

The last step creates dozens of *.pyc files under the cpython/Lib
directory.

I've recently started doing builds in a temporary subdirectory:

    ...
    mkdir BUILD_DIR
    cd BUILD_DIR
    ../configure
    make
    sudo make install

That does create a lot of files under BUILD_DIR, but I still get
a lot of root-owned *.pyc files under the cpython/Lib directory.

I have to run some command under sudo ("sudo rm ..." or "sudo git clean
...") to remove these *.pyc files before doing a new clean build, which
is a mild annoyance.

Without having looked into the details, I would have expected these
*.pyc files to be created by `make`, not by `sudo make install`,
but perhaps there are good reasons for the way it's done.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */