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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 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.