On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 7:07 AM, Kari Hoijarvi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> David Roundy wrote:
>> The problem with this change is that we use the current directory for
>> security reasons, since it's very hard to safely use the /tmp directory
>> when communicating with external programs.  e.g. every time we run darcs
>> push, darcs creates the patch bundle in a temporary file before applying
>> it.  If we create this file in /tmp, then a malicious user might be able to
>> cleverly create a substitute ...
> This is a know security issue, which has been addressed at least since
> Windows 2000. Temporary files need to be private.
>
> That's why the c:\temp is obsolete. By default Windows XP sets:
>
> TEMP=C:\Documents and Settings\hoijarvi\Local Settings\Temp
>
> I'm the owner of this directory, so you need to log on as me or
> administrators rights to access it.
>
> If the user sets TEMP=C:\Temp, it's already a security hole, not your
> problem.
>
> So darcs definitely should follow TEMP by default.
> Allowing to override this with DARCS_TMPDIR is fine but I see it as an
> unnecessary feature.

However, darcs isn't a windows-specific program, and it's usually best
to avoid adding operating-system-specific behavior.

David
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