[alexandria-devel] Proposed addition of temporary file creation utilities

[Hans Hübner]

2012/4/22 Faré <fahree at gmail.com>:
>> I like the portable getenv implementation - Not having that available
>> is why my proposal uses a logical pathname so that one can define the
>> temporary directory easily from the outside.
>>
> Both asdf and xcvb-driver export getenv.

I am aware of that.  I am lobbying for the inclusion in Alexandria so
that libraries which need the functionality need not depend on a build
system for this basic, non build-related functionality.  The idea was
motivated by work someone does on Postmodern, and even though
Quicklisp exists, having Postmodern depend on either XCVB or ASDF does
not seem like The Right Thing.

>> Then again, I'm not sure that Alexandria should include loads of
>> implementation specific switches.  It might then be better to combine
>> a cross-implementation getenv and the temporary file handling stuff
>> into a trivial-temporary-file library and let Quicklisp do the rest.
>>
> If you're unwilling to handle non-trivial system dependencies in alexandria,
> then maybe alexandria is not the place for this particular piece of code.
> Osicat, iolib (why do we need two such libraries?) might be better suited,
> or you could use xcvb-driver that exports this piece of functionality.

Neither osicat nor iolib offer portable implementations for temporary
file name generation.

-Hans