[SPARK-18817] Ensure nothing is written outside R's tempdir() by default

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.2, 2.1.0
• Fix Version/s: 2.1.1, 2.2.0
• Component/s: SparkR
• Target Version/s: 2.1.1, 2.2.0
• Assignee: Felix Cheung
• Reporter: Brendan Dwyer
• Created: 10/Dec/16 22:02
• Updated: 19/Mar/17 17:44
• Resolved: 19/Mar/17 17:39

Description

Per CRAN policies
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html

• Packages should not write in the users’ home filespace, nor anywhere else on the file system apart from the R session’s temporary directory (or during installation in the location pointed to by TMPDIR: and such usage should be cleaned up). Installing into the system’s R installation (e.g., scripts to its bin directory) is not allowed.
  Limited exceptions may be allowed in interactive sessions if the package obtains confirmation from the user.

• Packages should not modify the global environment (user’s workspace).

Currently "spark-warehouse" gets created in the working directory when sparkR.session() is called.

Issue Links

• links to: [Github] Pull Request #16247 (bdwyer2)
• links to: [Github] Pull Request #16290 (shivaram)
• links to: [Github] Pull Request #16330 (felixcheung)