Re: TMP and TEMP get redefined, but I need the original values

[Andy Koppe <andy dot koppe at gmail dot com>]

On 12 June 2011 20:07, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 6/12/2011 1:55 PM, Roland Bluethgen wrote:
>>
>> Hey folks!
>>
>> I don't update my Cygwin installation regularly, but recently I did, and
>> then a script of mine stopped working.
>>
>> Looking for the cause I found out that the Cygwin maintainers chose to
>> redefine the TEMP and TMP environment variables in /etc/profile like this:
>>
>> unset TMP TEMP
>> TMP="/tmp"
>> TEMP="/tmp"
>>
>> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2011-03/msg00211.html
>>
>> Before that change, the TMP and TEMP defined by Windows were used
>> unmodified (except for cygpath translation). I'm sure the maintainers
>> have good reasons for this change. However, now I'm unable to find out
>> the original TEMP setting from a script.
>>
>> To help your imagination what this could be good for, the purpose of the
>> script in question is for aiding in Windows maintenance, specifically
>> for cleaning up the TEMP folder.
>>
>> I helped myself by deactivating the lines cited above in /etc/profile
>> for now, but that is clearly not a fine solution. Well, I could store
>> the original values of TMP and TEMP in backup variables, like
>> WINDOWS_TEMP or so. That would have to go in /etc/profile before the
>> variables are unset. But then, this modification would probably get
>> overwritten the next time something is changed in that file on the
>> distribution side.
>
> No, it wouldn't get overwritten. ÂYour /etc/profile will only get
> overwritten if it's unchanged from the default.

That can be a problem in itself though, if you do want to benefit from
any updates. Therefore I think that the TMP/TEMP setting should go
into /etc/profile.d/temp.sh or some such, so that it can be removed or
modified without touching /etc/profile. Saving the original values
seems a good idea too.

(The reason for overriding TMP/TEMP is that having them point at the
default Windows temp directory causes odd permissions to be picked up
from that directory in some operations. IIRC, 'patch' was the
motivating example.)

Andy

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple