Bug#617299: dpkg-deb: should give a hint when it fails due to filling /tmp

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Sat, 2012-07-14 at 00:09:23 -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Martin-Éric Racine wrote:
> > The solution to bug #617299 is therefore to either define TMPDIR to
> > some actual hard-disk with sufficient storage space via a commandline
> > environment e.g. 'TMPDIR=/var/tmp make deb-pkg' whenever using
> > commands that require an unusually large amount of /tmp space, or to
> > completely disable the usage of a tmpfs for /tmp via initscripts
> > defaults in /etc/defaults/rcS and /etc/defaults/tmpfs, as appropriate.
> 
> Sort of.  It's still a dpkg (wishlist?) bug.  I would even think it
> might be possible for dpkg-deb to write its output directly to the
> expected target path or another file in the same directory.

Yes, it's possible, and it's on my TODO list pending merging some ar
code refactoring. The code needs to rewind the file descriptor to write
out the ar header for the final tar member size. WHich will imply way
faster .deb generation as the output will be only written once instead
of copyig data over multiple times.

thanks,
guillem