Mailing-List: contact dev-help@apr.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20021205143109.02c39cf0@pop3.rowe-clan.net>
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 14:33:12 -0600
To: Aaron Bannert <aaron@clove.org>
From: "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wrowe@apache.org>
Subject: Re: APR_TMP_DIRECTORY
Cc: dev@apr.apache.org
In-Reply-To: <754CD72A-0884-11D7-9902-000393B3C494@clove.org>
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021205123906.03e3da00@pop3.rowe-clan.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 01:05 PM 12/5/2002, Aaron Bannert wrote:

>On Thursday, December 5, 2002, at 10:43  AM, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
>>As a developer/administrator/user, I *really* get ticked off by those
>>developers who don't respect my system-wide %TEMP%/%TMP%
>>assignments.  This isn't just a personal choice, since on locked down
>>boxes or with apps installed on network filesystems, the cwd() is the
>>very *worst* place to put tempfiles.
>
>This is precisely why the app needs to let the admin chose where to
>put temp files.
>
>>That said, we also shouldn't force developers to give any thought to
>>these things.  If the proposed solution walks down the chain until we
>>find the most appropriate directory with create/write/rm access, then
>>that code needs not be duplicated by every app.
>>
>>Yes, envvars are good (as long as they correspond to each platform's
>>well-known envvar names.)  Let's not make apr counterintuitive for the
>>real users/administrators.
>
>Personally, I really get ticked off when programs go off and do
>weird things based on lame environment variables that I didn't
>explicitly set. We want to simplify and unify the interface
>to our programs, not cause unintended side-effects (or even
>worse, open up conduits for other holes to exploit).
>
>I don't care if there's a default as long as it comes from the app.
>If the app wants to default to %TEMP% or $TMP or whatever, that's
>fine, let them shoot themselves in the foot, but don't hand them
>the gun.

Ok... here's how I see us finding common ground...

Add an apr_filepath_temp_set() that allows the developer to override
the temp path for an entire app; e.g. those apps which have a config
directive SetTempPath /zzz can support their temp path config flag.

Unless apr_filepath_temp_set() was invoked, all temp-dir related
directives will use the "native" choice.

Bill