Re: [Groff] Re: Bug#216819: pic2graph included in groff is broke

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 11:43:48AM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
> On 21-Oct-03 Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 08:20:03PM -0700, Alex Withers wrote:
> >> --- pic2graph.old       2003-10-20 23:03:20.000000000 -0400
> >> +++ pic2graph   2003-10-20 23:03:43.000000000 -0400
> >> @@ -73,7 +73,7 @@
> >>  # 2. Process through eqn and pic to emit troff markup.
> >>  # 3. Process through groff to emit Postscript.
> >>  # 4. Use convert(1) to crop the PostScript and turn it into a bitmap.
> >> -tmp=/usr/tmp/pic2graph-$$
> >> +tmp=/tmp/pic2graph-$$
> >>  trap "rm ${tmp}.*" 0 2 15 
> >>  (echo ".EQ"; echo $eqndelim; echo ".EN"; echo ".PS"; cat; echo ".PE")
> >>  | \
> >>         groff -e -p $groffpic_opts -Tps >${tmp}.ps \
> > 
> > I've applied this to the Debian package, but I feel that /tmp is more
> > commonly available on Unix systems than /usr/tmp; the FHS renamed the
> > latter to /var/tmp, although it documents /var/tmp as for temporary
> > files that need to be preserved across reboots.
> > 
> > Perhaps this patch should be applied to official groff as well?
> 
> On Linux at least, all three are likely to be available (with /usr/tmp
> being symbolically linked to /var/tmp).

Well, the bug was filed because /usr/tmp is not available in Debian
GNU/Linux :-)

> But with reference to the above issue of what should be in the
> official groff code, if there is the possibility that the one chosen
> might not be available then surely a test in the script for existence
> --
> 
>   if [ -e /usr/tmp ] ; then ... ; else ... ; fi
> 
> should be used. Otherwise, someone installing groff would fail if the
> file did not exist, and it would not be at all obvious to the ordinary
> user how to fix it.

In principle, yes, this makes sense; but has there ever been a Unix
system without /tmp?

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden