How to change my tmp folder?

[Painkillerzzz]

May be a dumb questions but:

I'm on a server and there is a mismatch between my tmp folder (/data2/home/ABC/tmp/) and the one that pylance seems using. I tried reinstalling the extension and changing the system variable $TMPDIR. However I couldn't stop pylance from trying to access a folder that doesn't exist (/home/ABC/tmp/):

2025-03-28 06:49:04.796 [info] Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, mkdir '/home/ABC/tmp/pyright-1763274-YG5GgYubN5Ny'
at Object.mkdirSync (node:fs:1371:26)
at Object.I.exports.dirSync
at t.RealTempFile._getTmpDir
at t.RealTempFile.tmpdir
at _0x1998bc._setupBackgroundTaskRunner
at _0x1998bc._ensureWorkerStarted
at _0x1998bc._enqueueRequest
at _0x1998bc.notify
at _0x1998bc.setConfigOptions
at _0x3248ca.setConfigOptions
at _0x4f75b7.setOptions
at Function.runWithOptions
at _0x468425.updateOptionsAndRestartService
at _0x4cb949._updateSettingsForWorkspace
at async Promise.all (index 0)

2025-03-28 06:49:04.796 [info] [Error - 6:49:04 AM] Server process exited with code 1.

[Painkillerzzz]

A comprehensive log file:

pylance_log.txt

[rchiodo]

We use this module to generate a tmp folder:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/tmp

It's the thing that's failing above. Our code is doing this:

    private _getTmpDir(): tmp.DirResult {
        if (!this._tmpdir) {
            this._tmpdir = tmp.dirSync({ prefix: 'pyright' });
        }

        return this._tmpdir;
    }

So if you could get tmp.dirSync in local js file, it'd likely get pylance to work.

[Painkillerzzz]

Got it, thank you!

[heejaechang]

the lib gets tmpdir from os.tmpdir(). see https://github.com/raszi/node-tmp/blob/master/lib/tmp.js#L670

if you want to change what os.tmpdir() return, see nodejs's manual on how node's os.tmpdir gets temp dir path per os.

[Painkillerzzz]

That's a good point, because I tried this and what I found is that Node.js use TMPDIR as its temp dir.
I tried to export TMPDIR=... in ~/.bashrc and ~/.vscode-server/server-env-setup (the latter one is taught by chatgpt), and node -e "console.log(require('os').tmpdir())" outputs exactly what I expected: /data2/home/zhuerle/tmp.
However, the server still failed to launch and was trying to access /home/zhuerle/tmp.
Maybe the modification of the system variable TMPDIR was AFTER pylance used it in the pipeline and that's the reason it didn't work?

[Painkillerzzz]

I asked the administrator to create a directory at /home/zhuerle/tmp and everything went silent. I'm just curious about why I can't redirect the tmp folder.

[rchiodo]

I believe .bashrc only affects interactive terminals and not processes launched otherwise. You have to edit the /etc/environment file instead:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1641477/how-can-i-set-an-environment-variable-for-everyone-under-my-linux-system

[Painkillerzzz]

hmmm, it's a little tricky because I'm afraid it might mess up other users' environment. Like it said it will set env var for everyone in the system.

[rchiodo]

Maybe /etc/profile will work instead. You have to get the code-server process to start with it. Not sure how that launches though.

[Painkillerzzz]

Sounds good, I will try it.