[GRASS-dev] Question regarding GRASS_NOTIFY

[Nicklas Larsson]

Hi Devs,

Is there anyone out there who know about usage of the environment variable GRASS_NOTIFY, historically and in the present?

In addressing an otherwise trivial compiler warning, I stumbled into this for me strange piece of code and usage of GRASS_NOTIFY in the Raster Display Library. I put up a PR [1] suggesting the removal of this, but I agree with Vaclav I’d better ask here on the ML.

The only use of GRASS_NOTIFY is in “D_close_driver()” [2] and the value of that env variable (if set) is directly inserted in a “system()” call, without any sanitation!

Furthermore, GRASS_NOTIFY is not documented [3] other than very briefly in API docs [4].
There is a note, dated 2009, suggesting its use with ximgview [5].


I’d love to hear of your thoughts, experiences on this.

Best,
Nicklas



[1] https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/pull/2135
[2] https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/28a86c92761bdeeba199fc7e2ee159f018b6d529/lib/display/r_raster.c#L164
[3] https://grass.osgeo.org/grass80/manuals/variables.html
[4] https://grass.osgeo.org/programming8/defs_2display_8h.html#ab0d0949ed77467d353a47bef17b97318
[5] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-dev/2009-December/047194.html