Dear all, Several bugs have occurred because of LyX not deleting certain temporary files before recompiling. For example: http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9963 and there have been others.
If you are interested, you can read the comments on that ticket, but I think the problem is simple enough that I can summarize it below. The potential problem is pretty obvious in that we have a hard-coded list of temporary files that we think we should remove before compiling again after an error (you can see this list in LaTeX::removeAuxiliaryFiles()). I think that the list is imperfect and will always be imperfect (don't some packages have their own temporary files that they keep?). As for why keeping temporary files can lead to an error, I don't actually know, but I've seen it happen often enough. From what I understand, the reason why we keep temporary files around at all is that they can speed up subsequent compilations. It seems to me that this caching works well in the case where there is no error, so unless others disagree we do not need to debate about this situation. On the other hand, keeping temporary files around has been a source of bugs for the situation where we are compiling after there was an error. I think the main question that needs an answer is: Are there any temporary files that we want to keep after a compilation error? If not, it seems we can just have a fresh start when compiling again after an error. That is, instead of using the hard-coded list, we just remove all temporary files. Scott
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