Mktempdir bug

Mikhail_Kagalenko · August 21, 2023, 10:26am

Julia has an issue caused by mktempdir() that prevents precompiling of multiple packages on affected systems. This bug is three or more years old, yet is manifested sporadically, which is probably why it has not been fixed yet. I am looking for some workaround, perhaps, overloading the mktempdir() function, because at present it makes the Julia language unusable on affected computers.

Mikhail_Kagalenko · August 25, 2023, 11:34am

This issue is also present in the latest release 1.9.3, same error from libuv.jl:100

Mikhail_Kagalenko · November 25, 2023, 5:12pm

Julia is practically unusable on Windows 7 due to this, because it makes it impossible to install many popular packages, such as Images.jl . The issue is still present in 1.9.4 release.

mkitti · November 25, 2023, 5:48pm

Did you set the environment variable TMPDIR ?

julia> ENV["TMPDIR"] = joinpath(pwd(), "temporary")
"/home/mkitti/temporary"

julia> mkdir(ENV["TMPDIR"])
"temporary"

julia> mktempdir()
"/home/mkitti/temporary/jl_1AnfFW"

mkitti · November 25, 2023, 5:58pm

Also see GetTempPathW function (fileapi.h) - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

So perhaps change the environment variable TMP or TEMP.

Also libuv xref:
https://docs.libuv.org/en/v1.x/misc.html#c.uv_os_tmpdir

Mikhail_Kagalenko · December 2, 2023, 3:34pm

That does nothing whatsoever for the precompile error.

mkitti · December 3, 2023, 2:19am

Did it change the location of the temporary directory?

Mikhail_Kagalenko · December 7, 2023, 9:13am

No

mkitti · December 7, 2023, 10:40am

Try these directions to see if changing the temporary directory location helps:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/change-location-of-temp-files-folder-to-another/19f13330-dde1-404c-aa27-a76c0b450818

Mikhail_Kagalenko · December 7, 2023, 12:03pm

On what grounds do you expect that changing precompilation directory will make any difference?

mkitti · December 7, 2023, 12:30pm

The reported error is a file permission issue. Perhaps if you relocate the temporary directory to a directory where you more clearly have file permissions, there might not be a problem deleting the temporary files.

I was inspecting the source code, and there have been changes to this part of the Julia code that may resolve the issue.
In particular, it seems that this function should only warn if there an issue deleting these files. There have also been changes in this area with regard to precompilation.

github.com

JuliaLang/julia/blob/39ccdb27990d0095d44715394bf2cb18f6b14dd3/base/file.jl#L552


      
          function temp_cleanup_purge_prelocked(force::Bool)
              filter!(TEMP_CLEANUP) do (path, asap)
                  try
                      ispath(path) || return false
                      if force || asap
                          prepare_for_deletion(path)
                          rm(path, recursive=true, force=true)
                      end
                      return ispath(path)
                  catch ex
                      @warn """
                          Failed to clean up temporary path $(repr(path))
                          $ex
                          """ _group=:file
                      ex isa InterruptException && rethrow()
                      return true
                  end
              end
              nothing
          end

Could you try the nightly builds and report the stacktrace if the error still occurs?