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

[GoogleCodeExporter]

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

Original issue reported on code.google.com by matthieu...@gmail.com on 1 Jun 2011 at 6:56

[GoogleCodeExporter]

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.

Original comment by shiblon on 1 Jun 2011 at 7:20

• Changed state: WontFix

[GoogleCodeExporter]

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

Original comment by matthieu...@gmail.com on 1 Jun 2011 at 8:33