Comment 19 for bug 1203240

(In reply to comment #12)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > (In reply to comment #4)
> > > It can be used between sessions if webkit gives an appropriate name to the
> > > files IIRC. But yes, it should probably go into g_get_tmp_dir(). Main
> > > problem with that is that some people put /tmp on a tmpfs... so if you want
> > > to watch a long enough movie, your memory runs full.
> >
> > /tmp on tmpfs has been default in Fedora for several years now... I was
> > amazed quite recently to learn that other distros are still not doing this.
> > Anyway, the videos would have to go in /var/tmp since they are big. But
> > /var/tmp is not cleaned automatically, so there needs to be some measure to
> > clean up leaked videos in the event of a web process crash.

This is not necessarily true, many (most?) GNU/Linux distributions clean
“/var/tmp”:

  % grep '/var/tmp ' /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf
  q /var/tmp 1777 root root 30d
  %

Still, using “/var/tmp” is not a good option because many systems are known
*not to* clean it by default ({Free,Open,Net}BSD), and applications are
expected to clean up after themselves when creating files under ”/var/tmp”.

> I suggest removing the file just after opening it for write.

+1

If we can make GStreamer happy without having named files, passing the FD
around is the absolute best option.

> That way you can continue to use the file for reading or writing to it, by
> passing the file descriptor id.
>
> The kernel will automatically remove the file once the descriptor id is
> closed or the process holding the file descriptor id dies (crashes or exits)
>
> So you not longer have to take care of cleaning the files. The file will be
> automatically cleaned when you not longer use it.

As an additional small side bonus unlinking the file after opening causes less name space pollution in the directory used for temporary files. Which reduces
contention for creating new temporary files — anyway this is most likely
irrelevant for web browsing, but still nice :)