Bug#913557: jenkins.debian.org: Vary setting TMPDIR during reproducibility testing?

[Stuart Prescott]

Package: jenkins.debian.org
Severity: wishlist

Recent discussions on debian-policy about packages obeying (or not) the
TMPDIR environment variable made me wonder if it was useful to vary too.

Varying TMPDIR perhaps opens a wider discussion about how robust the build
should be to the environment. I'd argue that TMPDIR is not an environment
variable that is used to control build tools as it is an implementation
detail of where files are stored. If a user varies CFLAGS (say), they are
deliberately changing the configuration of build tools and get to keep
both pieces when it breaks. However, a user can conceivably need to set
TMPDIR to manage space used by a build or could have it routinely set
for other reasons.

I don't think we want build outputs or package contents to depend on the
value of TMPDIR. However, one could conceive of situations where some
tools honoured TMPDIR while others assume that /tmp is to be used and that
varying TMPDIR could change the contents of files, which files are in the
packages, or even cause the build to fail.

(codesearch.d.n tells me that " /tmp" is used quite a lot in d/rules)

cheers
Stuart