Re: [Texmacs-dev] Temporary file creation

[David Allouche]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:05:56AM +0200, Norbert Nemec wrote:
> Sorry, I just realized after searching the web, that this already has been 
> discussed on this list a while ago:
>       http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/texmacs-dev/2003-02/msg00061.html
> 
> From that point of view, I would clearly suggest to 
> 1) use tmpname to create a name for a *subdirectory* in /tmp
> 2) create that directory with restrictive permissions
> 3) make sure that the permissions are correct and it really is a directory 
> (and not a symlink, etc.)
> 4) do whatever you like within the directory without having to worry about 
> filenames

I do not think I made my opinion very clear before, but I agree this
is probably the best way to go.

Note however that the portability of mkdtemp(3) to lower Unixen might
be problematic. The man page reads:

    CONFORMING TO
           Introduced in OpenBSD 2.2.  Available since glibc 2.1.91.

and Joris seems to have made a policy not to depend on lstat(2)
because of a portability problem he experienced with a fully
statically linked (including a statically linked libc) texmacs
executable.

So how to implement this proposal is still unclear.

Though, now that texmacs no longer uses insecure temporary files, this
has become a low priority change. Understand: do not expect Joris or
me to do it, but I think contributions going in this direction should
be accepted.

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa