NAME

mkv —

create and optionally remove a really temporary directory

SYNOPSIS

mkv dircomp [file...]

mkv -h | -V

DESCRIPTION

The mkv utility is meant to create a really, really temporary directory and then take care of removing it so that you don't have to :) It examines several environment variables to determine where this directory should be placed, then creates it, optionally moves some files into it, starts a new shell so you can do your work there, and finally asks you if the directory should be removed.

Options:

-h: Display a usage message and exit.
-V: Display program version information and exit.

FIXME: write some more.

RETURN VALUES

The mkv utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT

In its operation, the mkv utility checks for the presence of several sets of environment variables:

*: To determine the name of the currently logged-in user, mkv tests for non-zero strings the USER and LOGNAME environment variables and the output of the whoami(1) command.
*: To determine the user's home directory, mkv checks in order the following paths: ~, HOME, /home/username, /home/USER, /home/LOGNAME. The first of those that signifies a writeable directory is used.
*: To determine the path to the temporary directory to use, mkv checks in order the following paths: TEMPDIR, TEMP, TMP, HOME/tmp, /var/tmp, /tmp. The first of those that signifies a writeable directory is used.
*: To determine which shell to execute in the temporary directory, mkv checks in order the following paths: SHELL, /bin/sh. The first of those that signifies an executable file is used.

FILES

FIXME: write me up.

EXAMPLES

FIXME: write me up.

HISTORY

The mkv utility was written by Peter Pentchev in 2010.

AUTHORS

Peter Penchev ⟨roam@ringlet.net⟩

BUGS

This manual page is woefully incomplete :)

TODO

*: Add the -d basedir option to supplement the MKV_BASE environment variable.
*: Add the -y and -n options to specify if the volatile directory should be removed.
*: Add the -v option for verbose operation.
*: As noted in the Makefile, add a config file specifying the default basedir; maybe also look in the user's home directory?
*: As noted in the Makefile, add an init script creating the system-wide basedir at startup and cleaning it up at shutdown.