rdmd - No output when run on WebFaction

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 31 August 2014 at 09:51:13 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
> Am Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:01:23 +0000
> schrieb "David Chin" <dlcmhd at me.com>:
>
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> On WebFaction, my Linux shared hosting server, I created a 
>> simple "Hello, World!" script in a file named "hello.d".
>> 
>> Attempting to run the script with "rdmd hello.d" yielded no 
>> error messages, and strangely, no output.
>> 
>> However, the following works, and I see the output:
>> 
>> (1) dmd hello.d
>> (2) ./hello
>> 
>> Running "rdmd --chatty hellod.d" shows D writing some files to 
>> /tmp folder and calling exec on the final temp file.
>> 
>> I suspect the reason I'm not seeing any output using rdmd has 
>> something to do with WebFaction's security policies 
>> disallowing any execution on files in the /tmp folder.
>> 
>> May I request that rdmd check, say, the environment variables 
>> tmp or temp for the path to write the temporary files in?
>> 
>> Thanks!
>
> Sorry for hijacking. I believe any program should remove what
> it placed in /tmp on exit and actively manage any cached files
> under /var/lib, e.g. by age or size of the cache. In the case
> of rdmd, I'd even prefer to just do what most native compilers
> do and place object files alongside the sources, but allow
> custom object file directories. Usually I wouldn't say
> anything, because endless bike-shedding ensues, but it looks
> like now there is a technical argument, too. :p

There are some other technical arguments, too, but it looks like 
they speak against /var/lib:

* Permissions: /var/lib is not world-writable; there would either 
need to be a new world-writable directory below it (bad 
practice), or rdmd would have to run as setuid with a dedicated 
user. That's not a good idea either, because users would then 
have access to other users' binaries.
* Similarly, you don't want to store the binaries next to the 
sources if those are in /usr/bin, for example.
* /tmp is often cleaned regularly. But maybe /var/tmp would be 
more appropriate than /tmp.

About the original post: While the cause of the problem seems 
clear in your case, rdmd also doesn't print anything when the 
compiled program segfaults. This could be another candidate for 
the observed behaviour.