I wish this nonsense of piping a shell script from the internet directly into Bash would stop. It’s a bad idea, because of security concerns.
I would encourage you to actually think about whether or not this is really true, rather than just parroting what other people say.
See if you can think of an exploit I perform if you pipe my install script to bash, but I can’t do it you download a tarball of my program and run it.
while requiring root access
Again, think of an exploit I can do it you give me root, but I can’t do if you run my program without root.
(Though I agree in this case it is stupid that it has to be installed in /opt; it should definitely install to your home dir like most modern languages - Go, Rust, etc.)
It is also terrible conditioning to pipe stuff to bash because it’s the equivalent of “just execute this .exe, bro”. Sure, right now it’s github, but there are other curl|bash installs that happen on other websites.
Additionally a tar allows one to install a program later with no network access to allow reproducible builds. curl|bash is not repoducible.
But…“just execute this .exe, bro” is generally the alternative to pipe-to-Bash. Have you personally compiled the majority of software running on your devices?
I would encourage you to actually think about whether or not this is really true, rather than just parroting what other people say.
See if you can think of an exploit I perform if you pipe my install script to bash, but I can’t do it you download a tarball of my program and run it.
Again, think of an exploit I can do it you give me root, but I can’t do if you run my program without root.
(Though I agree in this case it is stupid that it has to be installed in
/opt
; it should definitely install to your home dir like most modern languages - Go, Rust, etc.)I would encourage you to read up on the issue before thinking they haven’t.
Here is the most sophisticated exploit: Detecting the use of “curl | bash” server side.
It is also terrible conditioning to pipe stuff to bash because it’s the equivalent of “just execute this
.exe
, bro”. Sure, right now it’s github, but there are other curl|bash installs that happen on other websites.Additionally a tar allows one to install a program later with no network access to allow reproducible builds. curl|bash is not repoducible.
Anti Commercial-AI license
But…“just execute this
.exe
, bro” is generally the alternative to pipe-to-Bash. Have you personally compiled the majority of software running on your devices?