[Bug 1463561] Re: adt-run eats its log dir for breakfast

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

** Branch linked: lp:ubuntu/wily-proposed/autopkgtest

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1463561

Title:
  adt-run eats its log dir for breakfast

Status in autopkgtest package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  Before running any tests, adt-run does a 'rm -rf' of its log
  directory, and aborts if this causes any errors.

  This is a problem because it's dangerous, it's unintuitive, and it
  breaks unix conventions.

  Dangerous:  Ever tried using $HOME as the log dir?  When an attempt to
  use /tmp for logging fails due to permission issues, the next obvious
  choice is to use '.' or $HOME, which can cause disaster.

  Unintuitive: The obvious first choices for a log dir are places like
  /tmp, ., $HOME, and /var/log.  None of these actually work, and fail
  with a traceback.  It's awkward to require a directory which doesn't
  even exist.

  Breaks conventions: In general, most tools want to have a parent
  directory or an existing directory specified for their logging, as in
  the list of common directories above.  Then the convention-compliant
  tool either writes logs to that directory (without first 'rm -rf'ing
  it) or creates a new child subdirectory such as /tmp/foo.24153/ to
  store results in.  adt-run does not do this, which creates surprising
  results.

  Could we change the log dir behavior of adt-run to be safer and more
  similar to other tools?

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