Default tempdir

[Ole Tange]

Today I had the problem that /tmp on the system was not big enough to
hold the output from GNU Parallel, but the current directory had
plenty of space. /tmp had 5 GB available and my output was 8 GB and
because I needed -k I had to be able to buffer all of the output.

This leads me to believe we need an option --tmpdir and $TMPDIR to set
where the tmp dir should be.

My question is now: What should the default be? /tmp or current directory.

The argument for /tmp would be that this is probably the fastest disk
on the system, whereas current dir may be a slow nfs-mounted dir.

The argument against is my above situation: /tmp may be too small.

On the systems you use which would make more sense: /tmp or current
dir or dontcare?


/Ole