Bug#781789: I: [boinc_alpha] I: Bug#781789: boinc-manager: Boinc Manager seems to drop a configuration file into the home directory without hiding it

[Olly Betts]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 11:51:18AM +0000, Gianfranco Costamagna wrote:
> I'm still having issue in understanding why
> "wxSingleInstanceChecker()" should create a lock file in my home
> directory rather than in some more appropriate file, and why the file
> doesn't end in .lock or whatever that would have helped me a lot in
> understanding what was going on.

It creates the lock file where you tell it to, with a default of:

homedir + "/" + appname + "-" + userid

That's arguably not a great default, but changing it now it is
established is problematic as it'll break the single instance checking
between apps using wx versions from before and after the change.  

I'd expect wx upstream would only consider that at the start of a
release series.

If they're going to change, using a shared memory object seems a better
approach, so I've opened a ticket with wx upstream to suggest that:

http://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/17046

But changing to a shared memory object or a different default filename
unilaterally in Debian doesn't seem a good idea, so if you want to fix
this for boinc in the short term, passing an explicit location for the
file is a better plan (as the upstream code already does for OS X).
You'll also have the interoperability considerations, but they are
easier to decide for a single application as the implications of ending
up with two instances are clearer for a particular case than in general.

Cheers,
    Olly