Log file with mkstemp() suffix or not? Re: r15435

[Christian Stimming]

Can someone explain to me the intention of the following code that  
initialiizes the trace file output file descriptor (from  
src/libqof/qof/qoflog.c:157ff)

   fname = g_strconcat(log_filename, ".XXXXXX", NULL);
   if ((fd = g_mkstemp(fname)) != -1)
   {
       g_rename(fname, log_filename);
       fout = fdopen(fd, "w");
   }

where log_filename=="/tmp/gnucash.trace", so that fname will be  
something like "/tmp/gnucash.trace.KSHDJS". From reading the code, I  
guess it should mean "Open gnucash.trace.KSHDJS as trace file and  
immediately after opening it, rename it back into gnucash.trace".  
That's at least what the introduction of this code in  
http://svn.gnucash.org/trac/changeset/15435 suggests.

However, this isn't what is happening. Instead, the trace files keep  
their suffix so that in /tmp, plenty of .gnucash.trace.ABCDEF files  
will accumulate over time. Doesn't this mean this code is wrong?

I'm asking because on win32/MSVC, I get a failed runtime assertion in  
libc at the g_rename. This might be because on Windows, the OS does  
not allow opened files to be renamed, but in any case  
g_file_open_tmp() is probably the better choice for win32 anyway.

But for Linux, the question is still what this code should have  
achieved and why it doesn't achieve this?

Puzzled,

Christian