Why does inlineimage delete the main file's aux file? about asymptote

[user202729]

Actually the point is that the jobname is customized to be the same of the main file...? But looks like the feature is somewhat broken anyway.

Try compiling the following file:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{asymptote}
\begin{document}
123
\begin{asy}
	label("[\jobname]");
\end{asy}

\end{document}

Expected behavior: the [ and the ] is visible.

Actual behavior: they're truncated.

Deleting the whole thing might be a reasonable option.

diff --git a/picture.cc b/picture.cc
index 65c72cbc..4ca86284 100644
--- a/picture.cc
+++ b/picture.cc
@@ -381,20 +381,6 @@ void texinit()
   } else {
     if(!dir.empty())
       cmd.push_back("-output-directory="+dir);
-    string jobname="texput";
-    if(getSetting<bool>("inlineimage") || getSetting<bool>("inlinetex")) {
-      string name=stripDir(stripExt((outname())));
-      size_t pos=name.rfind("-");
-      if(pos < string::npos) {
-        name=stripExt(name).substr(0,pos);
-        unlink((name+".aux").c_str());
-        jobname=name.substr(0,pos);
-        cmd.push_back("-jobname="+jobname);
-#ifdef __MSDOS__
-        cmd.push_back("NUL"); // For MikTeX
-#endif
-      }
-    }
     cmd.push_back("\\scrollmode");
   }

(This way if there happens to be a file named texput.aux then there's a problem. But we can just set the jobname to some uniquely-named file to avoid problems...?)

[johncbowman]

Indeed, the commit message

In inlinetex mode, avoid interference from pre-existing aux file.

answers your question. We don't want to clutter up the working directory with other file prefixes.

Instead of accessing the volatile symbol \jobname, the user should do this to obtain the desired result:

\begin{asy}
	label("["+defaultfilename+"]");
\end{asy}

[user202729]

Instead of accessing the volatile symbol \jobname, the user should do this to obtain the desired result:

I see. In that case my concern (that jobname must be changed in order to make the values in the measure phase be the same as the actual run) was not a problem

We don't want to clutter up the working directory with other file prefixes.

This is actually not a problem. Starting from a.tex contains

%! TEX program = pdflatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{asymptote}
\begin{document}
123
\begin{asy}
	label("45");
\end{asy}

\end{document}

and type latexmk, the following files are generated, regardless whether the proposed changes are done:

$ ls
a-1.asy  a-1.pdf  a.aux  a.fdb_latexmk  a.fls  a.log  a.pdf  a.pre  a.tex

In other words, the clean-up appears to be done correctly. So it's not a problem.

Still, it feels like a good idea to randomize the jobname -- just in case there are multiple parallel runs of asy in the same directory.

An alternative is to specify -output-directory to be a temporarily-created directory. Then no clutter of current directory, and clean-up is easy.

I think implementing the proposed changes would be a good idea.