g.tempfile -d: make a directory not a filename

[landam]

Reported by hamish on 2 Mar 2013 12:13 UTC Hi,

in grass7 there is a new g.tempfile -d flag to do a "dry run". It is used in core.py by grass.tempdir() to later make a directory by the returned string name. This has three things against it: 1) it causes a race condition. 2) it diverges from the usage of /bin/mktemp -d, which is used to make a directory. 3) it's a lot more convoluted than just making the tempfile a directory in the first place, which is the only(?) known use of -d for dryrun.

I propose that the -d flag in g.tempfile be changed to match mktemp's usage, i.e. make a directory instead.

It is not present in grass6, so there is not a backwards compatibility problem to change it now. I'd suggest that the -d flag to make a new directory would be useful to backport to grass6 once it is ready.

thanks, Hamish

ps- argh trac is logging out every 5 minutes again

GRASS GIS version and provenance

svn-trunk

Migrated-From: https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/1902

[landam]

Comment by @landam on 2 Mar 2013 12:23 UTC No objections, feel free to implement it.

[landam]

Comment by neteler on 4 Jan 2014 20:57 UTC (Un)related:

To avoid race conditions on high end systems, the use of PID is not save. For a new G_mktemp() implementation, see also ticket https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/ticket/2153

[landam]

Modified by @landam on 12 May 2016 06:43 UTC

[landam]

Modified by @landam on 23 Aug 2016 08:58 UTC

[landam]

Comment by @landam on 27 Aug 2016 13:42 UTC Milestone renamed

[landam]

Comment by mmetz on 11 Nov 2017 18:38 UTC The behaviour of a flag should not be changed within minor releases, bumping up to GRASS 8.