:pre not working on macOS, missing /var/tmp/vi.recover

[Dave Jones]

:preserve does not seem to work with macOS/homebrew v7.4.26 using the default /var/tmp/vi.recover location.

Low priority.

Works normally on GNU/Linux (compiled).

Simple missing directory:

$ ovi -r
Error: recdir: /var/tmp/vi.recover: No such file or directory

~
:pre
Preservation of this file not possible

:set recdir?
recdir="/var/tmp/vi.recover"

$ ls -la /var/tmp/vi*
ls: /var/tmp/vi*: No such file or directory

/var/tmp does exist so maybe add mkdir -p /var/tmp/vi.recover to the build process somehow?
Appears to work like I'd expect once I do that manually.

mkdir -p /home/kajukenbo/vi.recover and set recdir="/home/kajukenbo/vi.recover" also seems to work.

Thanks as always for keeping vi alive.

[Jeffrey H. Johnson]

@kajukenbo

Thanks for the report, confirmed.

A quick search shows that /private/var/tmp/ is probably the correct location for macOS. The /tmp is a symlink to /private/tmp and it looks like /var/tmp is a hard link to /private/var/tmp but I have double check to be sure.

Ideally, the preserve directory should be something that doesn't get deleted too often, and isn't in a private namespace, so you can run the recover script on unclean reboot. However, (since nobody really runs it anymore), if we do use a private namespace, I can just have OpenVi itself make the subdirectory if it's missing.

So, let me think a bit more about how to best handle it, but a fix should be easy enough and will come soon.

[Dave Jones]

Just a heads-up, this now (?) seems to occur with Linux builds on compiled OpenVi 7.4.27.
I just compiled it on a new install to make sure it was not my imagination.

Maybe it worked before since I was using nvi and it automatically made /var/tmp/vi.recover beforehand?

Version 7.4.27 (OpenVi) 09/07/2023.

:set recdir?
recdir="/var/tmp/vi.recover"
:pre
Preservation of this file not possible.

The work-around still seems to be:

# sudo mkdir -m 1777 -p /var/tmp/vi.recover

[Jeffrey H. Johnson]

@kajukenbo

I'm not really sure if there is an equivalent to this directory on macOS that exists by default in the current versions, that is, something that is a shared amongst users and doesn't get cleaned up automatically too often, or on reboots.

There does seem to be a /private/var/tmp directory, which I think doesn't get cleaned out on reboot. It's only for the current user, but I think that's OK.

I'll look into it, but on macOS, I think using /private/var/tmp as _PATH_PRESERVE for recdir could work.

In the meantime, you can try adding set recdir="/private/var/tmp" to your .(n)exrc file and seeing if that works the way you want.