/tmp/pytest-of-$USER taking up a lot of space

[mimre25]

Hi,

I just noticed that the pytest tmp-files take up a lot of space:

~ du -sh /tmp/pytest-of-martin 
18G	/tmp/pytest-of-martin 

I searched through the issues a bit but I couldn't find anything that points at to such a huge usage.

Any idea what could cause that or how I could investigate this further?

For context: I'm using micromamba to separate envs and have multiple envs with pytest installed inside of them.
I'm also using tox and work on many different projects - but 18GB seems just extremely excessive to me.

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

The seen size is indeed excessive and uncommon

How many folders are directly inside that one?

[mimre25]

Only the 7 shown below and a symlink pytest-current which points at pytest-9

➜  pytest-of-martin pwd
/tmp/pytest-of-martin                                       [0,02s]
➜  pytest-of-martin du -h --max-depth=1                   
2,0G	./pytest-5
101M	./pytest-9
5,3G	./pytest-8
2,4G	./pytest-6
1,4G	./pytest-7
2,0G	./pytest-4
4,4G	./pytest-2

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

I recommend exploring the retention policies that drop passing test tmpdirs earlier as it looks like your baseline is higher

[The-Compiler]

pytest itself doesn't store anything there, but your tests probably do. You might want to use something like ncdu or gdu (or graphical eqivalents) to figure out what's in there and where it's coming from.

I also find it odd that you have 7 such folders, though. By default, pytest stores 3 folders, so I'm assuming you set tmp_path_retention_count = 7 somewhere?

[mimre25]

I've ran a recursive grep over all my projects but couldn't find the settings anywhere.

Is there any other way to configure it? Maybe via an environment variable?
Do you know of any other tools affecting it? (Eg tox or virtualenv?)

Most space in there is used by folders like

457M	/tmp/pytest-of-martin/pytest-8/popen-gw3/test_pyproject_deps_from_stati9/p/.tox

It turns out that test_pyproject_deps_from_static is a test in tox (src)

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

I believe enabling eagerly removing passed test folders will cut the size

[mimre25]

Since I don't necessarily have a say about such settings in bigger open source projects, I think my hands are tied.

As for now, I'll just delete it.
And if it grows again, I'll take a shot a reproducing it. 🙂

Thanks, for all the input!

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

A start would be a upstream report

The features that help are most likely more recent than the test support these projects put in place, it may turn into a welcome addition

[mimre25]

FYI: I've reported it here: tox-dev/tox#3278