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Am in the only one who cringes at install instructions that require piping some curl output into bash? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 days ago by cschreib@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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curl https://some-url/ | sh

I see this all over the place nowadays, even in communities that, I would think, should be security conscious. How is that safe? What's stopping the downloaded script from wiping my home directory? If you use this, how can you feel comfortable?

I understand that we have the same problems with the installed application, even if it was downloaded and installed manually. But I feel the bar for making a mistake in a shell script is much lower than in whatever language the main application is written. Don't we have something better than "sh" for this? Something with less power to do harm?

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[–] gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Showing people that are running curl piped to bash the script they are about to run doesn't really accomplish anything. If they can read bash and want to review the script then they can by just opening the URL, and the people that aren't doing that don't care what's in the script, so why waste their time with it?

Do you think most users installing software from the AUR are actually reading the pkgbuilds? I'd guess it's a pretty small percentage that do.

[–] rah@feddit.uk -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Showing people that are running curl piped to bash the script they are about to run doesn't really accomplish anything. If they can read bash and want to review the script then they can by just opening the URL

What it accomplishes is providing the instructions (i.e. an easily copy-and-pastable terminal command) for people to do exactly that.

[–] gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you can't review a bash script before running it without having an unnecessarily complex one-liner provided to you to do so, then it doesn't matter because you aren't going to be able to adequately review a bash script anyway.

[–] rah@feddit.uk 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you can't review a bash script before running it without having an unnecessarily complex one-liner provided to you

Providing an easily copy-and-pastable one-liner does not imply that the reader could not themselves write such a one-liner.

Having the capacity to write one's own commands doesn't imply that there is no value in having a command provided.

unnecessarily complex

LOL

[–] gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think you realize that if your goal is to have a simple install method anyone can use, even redirecting the output to install.sh like in your examples is enough added complexity to make it not work in some cases. Again, those are not made for people that know bash.

[–] rah@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

even redirecting the output to install.sh like in your examples is enough added complexity to make it not work in some cases

You can't have any install method that works in all cases.

if your goal is to have a simple install method anyone can use

Similarly, you can't have an install method anyone can use.