Gives a fake ["root"] environment , to remove the need to become root for a ["package"] build.

fakeroot runs a command in an environment were it appears to have root privileges for file manipulation. This is useful for allowing users to create archives (tar, ar, .deb etc.) with files in them with root permissions/ownership. Without fakeroot one would have to have root privileges to create the constituent files of the archives with the correct permissions and ownership, and then pack them up, or one would have to construct the archives directly, without using the archiver

Debian

This package is intended to enable something like:

  dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

i.e. to remove the need to become root for a package build. This is done by setting LD_PRELOAD to libfakeroot.so, which provides wrappers around getuid, chown, chmod, mknod, stat, and so on, thereby creating a fake root environment.

fakeroot requires SYSV IPC to operate.

Error Messages

fakeroot: nested operation not yet supported

This error occurs if an attempt is made to run fakeroot from within a fakeroot environment. The error may occur during an attempt to build project code from within a fakeroot environment and has been observed to occur when project builder tools are being used (such as ["debuild"]).

See also