Provide an option to have the temporary files created somewhere else than ./

[shiblon]

Originally reported on Google Code with ID 132

I wonder if it would be possible to specify a directory or have some default location
like /var/tmp where all the temporary files would be created instead of the current
directory. I usually compile my LaTeX files inside a dropbox directory and it's kind
of a waste to have all these temporary files synchronized all the time. Thanks in advance,

Matthieu

Reported by matthieu.masquelet on 2011-06-01 18:56:17

[shiblon]

I'm afraid that's more than a little difficult.  This would be possible if I were using
my own tool written from scratch, but make is a constraining factor, here.  The problem
arises from all of the rule dependencies, and how make expects them to be next to their
sources.  It is messy, yes, and it's rather unfortunate that it doesn't play nicely
with things like dropbox.  But, there is no clean way to make this happen with the
underlying technology, and messy ways aren't likely to play nicely with the other messes
we're making in the makefile.

I wish I had a better answer, but this is pretty fundamental and is not at all likely
to be changed.  That said, I'm open to bright ideas (and patches!).  It's just that
I have been thinking about this one for a long time and haven't come up with anything
yet.

Reported by shiblon on 2011-06-01 19:20:54

• Status changed: WontFix

[shiblon]

Thanks for your quick and honest answer. On my own very simple LaTeX makefiles, I get
away with it using 'pdflatex -output-directory' and specifying that directory in the
arguments for bibtex, makeindex, etc... but I only have a few TeX files to process.
I was afraid it would not "scale" very well :)

Good luck with your project !

Matthieu

Reported by matthieu.masquelet on 2011-06-01 20:33:36