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Re: Unset TMP/TEMP in profile? (was Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] [1.7] Updated: cygwin-1.7.0-67)


On 3/7/2011 8:42 AM, Andy Koppe wrote:
On 1 December 2009 09:15, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
On Nov 30 20:53, Robert Pendell wrote:
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 6:37 PM, Angelo Graziosi wrote:
Robert Pendell wrote:

P.S. - On linux (when I tested) TEMP, TMP, and TMPDIR were not set and patch defaulted to /tmp.

I noticed that too...


Ken Brown wrote:

That's precisely why I suggested unsetting TEMP and TMP in /etc/profile. Then things should work as in linux.

Indeed. But a question emerges: what does it happen if one starts a Windows application, which needs TEMP or TMP, from Cygwin?

For example, GSview (*) can view ps.bz2 or pdf.bz2 files uncompressing them
into $TEMP, so it fails if TEMP is not defined, and

$ gsview foo.pdf.bz2

is broken!

This is only an example of problems which can emerge unsetting TEMP.

Ciao,
Angelo.


Actually I had thought about that and I found that if you intentionally unset all the variables it defaults back to the system defined one which is dependent on the current user in Windows. Basically what TEMP and TMP is defined to in Windows itself. This is like the behavior in Linux.

I'm wondering if /etc/profile is actually the right place for unsetting TMP and TEMP. What about etc/defaults/etc/skel/.bashrc instead? It allows every user simple access to the setting of TMP and TEMP and it could be seasoned with a user-visible comment.

Reheating this old thread because the proposed base-files 4.0 makes a change here.

In the current 3.9-3, TEMP and TMP are unset in ~/.bashrc, as
suggested here by Corinna. Thing is, ~/.bashrc is only sourced for
non-login shells, yet the default console/mintty/rxvt shortcuts all
invoke bash as a login shell. In other words, this change might as
well not have been made as far as the vast majority of users are
concerned.

I don't think that's right. The default ~/.bash_profile sources ~/.bashrc, so the latter does get sourced for login shells.


Ken

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