What is the purpose of sysconfdir in rust installation?

[alitariq4589]

I am trying to build rust master branch from source on RISC-V architecture. On, execution of ./x.py install, I get the following error:

Building bootstrap
   Compiling bootstrap v0.0.0 (/home/user/Downloads/rust-1.81.0/rust/rust/src/bootstrap)
    Finished `dev` profile [unoptimized] target(s) in 36.42s
WARNING: The `change-id` is missing in the `config.toml`. This means that you will not be able to track the major changes made to the bootstrap configurations.
NOTE: to silence this warning, add `change-id = 129473` at the top of `config.toml`
warning: unable to check if origin/master is old due to error: No such file or directory (os error 2)
warning: origin/master is used to determine if files have been modified
warning: if it is not updated, this may cause files to be needlessly reformatted
DESTDIR is set to: "/etc"
thread 'main' panicked at src/core/build_steps/install.rs:92:9:
User doesn't have write access on `install.sysconfdir` path in `config.toml`.
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
Build completed unsuccessfully in 0:00:39

The sysconfdir is set to /etc and why does it require the write access? This kills the whole purpose of building from source (i.e. building in specific user space)

[ChrisDenton]

Note that you can change these values. Look at the [install] section in config.example.toml and copy/paste to config.toml, changing the values as desired. You can also override them on the command line, e.g. with:
./x.py install --set install.sysconfdir=??? (you'd probably also want to change install.prefix too).

Installing machine-wide (rather than per user) is also a typical default for many projects when you do make && make install without configuring the output dir.

[alitariq4589]

@ChrisDenton Thanks for the response.

Then I assume these configuration files can be installed in any location as the user desires and will not alter the installation process.

I already modified the install.prefix but it didn't change sysconfdir, so it struck me as an anomaly that I tried installing the package in the location where root/sudo privileges are not required but it still asked me for elevated privileges.

I think, it should be mentioned in the documentation explicitly, that if you want to build and store the binaries in a user-specific location instead of the system default location, then install.prefix AND install.sysconfdir both be changed via the command line.

[workingjubilee]

Please PR any improvements to the documentation that you desire.

[iyernaveenr]

Please PR any improvements to the documentation that you desire.

I also ran into this issue. Since no PR has been made yet as recommended above, I made one. Please find the PR below:
#131001

Thanks!

[jieyouxu]

Closing as PR is merged.