On Fri, 2022-10-28 at 11:52 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote: > > On Oct 28, 2022, at 11:32 AM, Paul Smith <psmith@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > In this release you can see that if we can't use the TMPDIR value, > > we fall back to a default value. I'm not sure this is correct; > > there's an argument to be made that if the user's requested > > location for a temporary directory cannot be used then we should > > exit and should not pick a different one behind their back. I'm > > undecided about this. > > Another option is to quietly try to create the TMPDIR directory like > "mkdir -p". The user specifically requested it, so it makes sense to > try to honor it. I'm even less comfortable with this than with using a different directory than requested. It means that GNU make would be creating random directories which, of course, would not be cleaned up again afterwards. Plus I'm not excited about implementing "mkdir -p" behavior in GNU make. In my experience tools that try to be too smart end up causing more problems than they solve. I prefer for tools to do exactly what I told them and, if they can't, to provide me with a clear message as to why so I can decide what the right solution is. Also I'm not aware of any other tool that will create TMPDIR if it doesn't exist so that behavior would be surprising to users I think.
