Hi,
you probably all know that PAR uses various environment variables for
both input and output. Only a few of them have been documented and most
of the documentation wasn't even in the main docs but in Alan Steward's
contributed docs. (Which are much more coherent than the main docs anyway.)
I have grepped trough the code and created a list of environment
variables in lib/PAR/Environment.pod [1] which, when done, could be
referenced by PAR.pm et al for details on the ENV vars which PAR uses.
Now, I haven't filled all blank spots in that documents. In fact, I have
only documented a few of the variables. I stopped when I noticed the odd
state of the environment vars which control the temporary directory
stuff. There are various variables which have something to do with this:
PAR_TMPDIR
PAR_TEMP
PAR_GLOBAL_TMPDIR
PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP
and the system's TMPDIR, TEMPDIR, TEMP and TMP are tried while searching
for the system temp dirs.
When I was still new as a PAR maintainer, I applied some patches in 0.90
which introduced PAR_TMPDIR and PAR_GLOBAL_TMPDIR. I'm confused as to
how ...TMPDIR and ...TEMP are related. Alan's "who_am_i.txt" sheds some
light on the difference between ..GLOBAL_TEMPDIR and ..TEMPDIR, but I'm
not sure I understand the issue in detail.
Now, I'd like to ask all of you to a) scrutinize what I have written so
far, b) shed some light on the whole temporary directory stuff, and c)
help out by adding explanations of the as-yet-undocumented environment
variables in the aforementioned file[1].
If you do not have a commit-bit to the repository but would like to
help, then this is the right time to get involved. Just drop me a note.
Thanks for helping out,
Steffen
[1] See
http://rt.openfoundry.org/Foundry/Project/Source/index.html/par/checkout/trunk/lib/PAR/Environment.pm
