Moved ~/.local/share/steam. Ran steam. It deleted everything owned by user

Post by dgreensp » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #135

preconsider wrote: post #90

To those name-calling the author of the script: The product/update is hyped and the release date is set in stone. Tensions are high and your boss has already let you know that you're on thin ice and not delivering on the project goals. A last-minute showstopper bug comes in, caused by file leaks. Everyone is scrambling, and the file belongs to you so its on you to fix it alone. There is no time for code review, and d…

Yes, that person is still an unprofessional idiot. If a doctor accidentally removes the wrong organ because administrators have overscheduled him, "whoopsie, not my fault" is not the appropriate answer. The same applies to engineers working on bridges. Professionals take responsibility for their working conditions. There is an enormous shortage of programmers right now. Anybody shipping stuff that is bad or dangerous…

Post by colanderman » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

__david__ wrote: post #176

colanderman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if the previous line was: STEAMROOT=$SOME_OTHER_UNSET_VARIABLE/ "rm -r " is a code smell, as much as "cc -o myprog .c" is. You should always know what files make up your system, and track them in a MANIFEST file. There's rarely a good reason to use wildcards when a program is dealing with its own files. xargs rm -df -- fixes this.

That looks like it works until your MANIFEST file ends up with a space character in one of the file names. For GNU xargs I like adding -d\\n which handles everything except files with an embedded newline. Those are much rarer than files with a space, though. Sadly, OS X xargs (probably BSD based) doesn't have that option, so I have an alias to do the same thing: alias xargsn="tr '\n' '\0' | xargs -0"

Post by DCoder » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

mtsmithhn wrote: post #190

The sad sad part of all this is that Half-life 1 had a similar bug in their windows installer and would wipe your program files if not careful http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=479484

Post by pixelbeat » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

unwind wrote: post #189

enneff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta question why they used -f.

That's normal, but why the trailing slash?! That's just pointless, and almost looks like an explicit deathtrap. Without the slash, an empty variable would result in a command line of "rf -rf" which would simply fail due to the missing argument. There is absolutely no need for having a trailing slash, it's not as if "rf -rf foo" and "rm -rf foo/" can ever mean two different things, there can be only one "foo" in the f…

Post by stonogo » Fri, Jan 16, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

chronid wrote: post #170

stonogo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is flawed. What is happening instead is someone is making a lamp, and then putting a sign on it says "LAMP is a lamp that lights your home! It's compatible with electricity and is under no warranty, express or implied!" and offering to let you take it home. And you seem to have missed the part where I explicitly said that both commercial and noncommercial software should be exposed to liability lawsuits.…

No, what is happening is someone making the instructions on how creating a lamp public and saying "I use this lamp in a controlled environment where using it cannot hurt anyone. If you try to use it outside of a similar controlled environment it may explode in your face, create a black hole and/or anhilate the universe. I don't really know, since I did not test it in that environment. Use it at your own risk." Then p…