696084 - There is no temporary directory on Android

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking: File, defect)

Description

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

By definition, there is no such thing as a temporary directory on Android. However, at the moment, GetSpecialSystemDirectory returns "/tmp", which is simply false.

Either GetSpecialSystemDirectory should fail on Android, or we should implement a notion of temporary directory by ourselves.

Comment 1

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Turns out that I'm partially wrong. Thanks to GeckoAppShell monkey-patching TEMP, GetSpecialSystemDirectory returns an existing directory. However, this directory does not behave as a temporary directory, insofar as it is never cleaned-up.

I suggest the following mechanism:
- don't return Activity.getDir("tmp", ...) but Activity.getDir("tmp/randomuniquename", ...)
- store both that directory and Activity.getDir("tmp", ...)
- spawn a thread that, after a few seconds, starts progressively removing all other directories from "tmp".

Comment 2

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Working on a patch.

Comment 3

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

wontfix?

Comment 4

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Yeah, let's.