Bug#530054: clisp-dev: bashism in /bin/sh script

[Raphael Geissert]

Hi Peter,

2009/11/3 Peter Van Eynde <pvaneynd at debian.org>:
> Hello Raphael,
>
> I don't know what went wrong there, but you're right it is still there,
> however in the code you can read:
>
>>     # Use a simple mkdir command. It is guaranteed to fail if the directory
>>     # already exists.  $RANDOM is bash specific and expands to empty in shells
>>     # other than bash, ksh and zsh.  Its use does not increase security;
>>     # rather, it minimizes the probability of failure in a very cluttered /tmp
>>     # directory.
>>     tmp=$TMPDIR/gt$$-$RANDOM
>>     (umask 077 && mkdir "$tmp")
>
> so the bashism is expected to degrade peacefully for non-bash scripts.
>
> I suppose that we can accept this behavior?
>

Well, there are two issues here: one is the bashism and the other is a
possible security issue (which is indeed mitigated by using mkdir; but
only works if set -e).

Why don't you just use mktemp(1)? it addresses both issues.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphael Geissert - Debian Developer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net