Overriding the check for ownership of a prefix

[Scott Ritchie]

So, I believe I have a legitimate use case for ignoring this, and want 
to know what sort of patch would go forward.


Imagine a distro package containing a Windows game in the form of a 
read-only copy of an installed prefix (into, say, /opt).  When the user 
launches the app (via desktop file) this in turn launches a script that 
does the following:

1) Makes a temporary folder
2) Sets up a unionfs-fuse copy-on-write mount between ~/.appname and the 
read-only packaged prefix in /opt, mounted in the temporary folder
3) Runs the app with WINEPREFIX= the temp folder
4) When the app is finished, unmounts the temp folder

This all works quite fine: new (or modified) files within the prefix get 
stored in ~/.appname, to be restored the next time the user runs the 
app.  Distinct users can run the app simultaneously, as they each have 
their own prefix.  Excess file-copying is avoided, as only the 
user-modified files need to be stored in the home folders.

There is one major snag, however: unionfs displays the owner as root 
until the user has modified/copied it.  This means Wine refuses to 
launch as the user with the "root-owned" prefix.  Simply commenting out 
this part of the code makes Wine work fine, however I'd like to be able 
to have a proper solution.


Would something like a command-line switch or environment variable be 
acceptable here?

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie


* Note that there is a problem with this setup if the app modifies the 
registry and we then need to update the prefix-default registry, but 
that's a different feature request