Dir.mktmpdir - can we finally add it

dsisnero · February 6, 2025, 11:12pm

Add a method to create and clean up a temporary directory to the standard library

opened 05:15AM - 16 Jan 24 UTC

kind:feature status:discussion help wanted topic:stdlib:files

## Discussion ### What aspect of the language would you like to see improved?… A method should be added to the standard library which allows users to create and clean up a temporary directory. It should have the ability to not only create a temporary directory but also expose a temporary directory in a block and then clean up that directory when the block scope ends. ### What are the reasons? There have been attempts in the past to add a method that creates and cleans up temporary directories. This shows that users of other programming languages expect to find this functionality in the standard library. Previous PRs: - https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/2911 - https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/4096 I was personally looking to diff two directories and being able to create temporary directories in that scenario would be useful. Building a naive solution for this is not difficult (see https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/4096#issuecomment-753679477) but it'd be great to have a more robust solution that users can use without having to worry about the implementation. ### Optionally add one (or more) proposals to improve the current situation. 1. Add `Dir.mktempdir` method and recursive option to `Dir.delete` As far as I can tell, the main reason that the other PRs and discussions stalled out was that there was disagreement over how tightly coupled the `Dir`, `File` and `FileUtils` modules should be. Specifically there were concerns raised about using `FileUtils` in either `Dir` or `File`. One of the proposals that got buried in the discussion was to add new functionality to the `Dir` module so that it wouldn't have to rely on `FileUtils` anymore to remove a temporary directory at the end of a block. Adding a new `Dir.delete(directory, recursive = false)` method would help solve these problems because we would be able to avoid using `FileUtils.rm_r`. I believe that the change to `Dir.delete` change was first proposed by @ysbaddaden in https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/issues/5231#issuecomment-343418239. Proposed Changes: - Add `Dir.mktempdir` - Update `Dir.delete(dir)` to `Dir.delete(dir, recursive = false)` Potential Follow-ups: - Update `FileUtils.rm_r` and `FileUtils.rm_rf` to use `Dir.delete(dir, recursive = true` --- 2. Add `FileUtils.mktemp_d` The advantage here is that we don't have to worry about this method sharing code with `FileUtils` though it does mean it's not exactly where people would expect it to be. It also acknowledges that this command does multiple things including deleting files which might not be what you expect to find in the `Dir` module. It seems like there is disagreement about whether adding new methods to `FileUtils` is even a good idea in the first place so this might be controversial. Proposed Changes: - Add `FileUtils.mktemp_d` ### Related Links - https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/issues/5231 - https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/2911 - https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/pull/4096

There have been a lot of discussion about mktmpdir - can we get it added to standard lib?

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Dir.mktmpdir - can we finally add it

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