Bug#797371: Processed: Re: Bug#797371: apt-listchanges: Fills up /tmp without noticing or offering configuration setting to avoid this

[Adam D. Barratt]

On Sun, 2015-09-27 at 01:48 -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> control: severity -1 wishlist
> control: reassign -1 src:devscripts
> control: retitle -1 debdiff: option to specify debdiff's temporary directory

Please CC receiving packages when you do that. I had to go and fetch an
mbox from the BTS in order to be able to reply sensibly.

> Alex Stammler wrote:
> > on a regular run of ‘aptitude safe-upgrade’, APT List Changes filled the temporary
> > filesystem to capacity and kept reporting over and over and over again (* literally
> > thousands of times) the problem it itself had caused:
> 
> apt-listdifferences just calls into debdiff, which doesn't currently
> have an option to specify tempdir.

debdiff uses File::Spec->tmpdir() and File::Temp, which will respect
$TMPDIR if set, so apt-listdifferences could simply ensure that it sets
that first.

Does this really need an explicit option in debdiff rather than using
the existing well-defined semantics for "please place your temporary
files here"?

Regards,

Adam