'needs-root' in combination with 'build-needed' unpacks code and runs build as root

[James Hunt]

If a DEP-8 package contains a debian/tests/control file which specifies:

  Restrictions: needs-root build-needed

... autopkgtest will:

- unpack the source as the root user
- run the build as the root user

This is unnecessary and places a burden on the test script to handle this scenario since if a test drops root privileges:

- it find that the directory tree is not writeable
- autopkgtest may well end up running the tests as root. This happens for Upstart since it has a 'make check' rule and dh calls dh_auto_test by default. However, it is not valid to run the Upstart tests as root.

I believe the behaviour of autopkgtest should be modified to:

1) Unpack the source as the user the tests would be run as if 'needs-root' were not specified.
2) Run the build as the same non-privileged user.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

A simple work-around is for build-needed to set DEB_BUILD_OPTION=nocheck
And the unit-tests need to be run as autopkgtest job.

Also the root & non-root tests should be split into separate paragraphs in the autopkgtest, if that allows specifying different constraints.