Need to understand "remove sandbox directory" tasks

[cnighojkar]

Hello ,
the task inside tasks/main.yml named "remove sandbox directory" .
Wish to know why we are deleting sandbox directory , because of this task the play is not idempotent.
Must be there some genuine reason for this.

[evnm]

Hello Chetan. The intention of the "sandbox" directory is for it to be used as a working directory for the duration of the play. Thus, it (by default) resides under /tmp and serves as a) a dumping ground for downloaded source tarballs and b) as a working directory for compilation. The play then cleans up after itself before terminating, by deleting the sandbox directory.

I don't think that this directory's deletion prevents the play from being idempotent, since the playbook's first task is to create it. However, it could potentially cause problems If a host already has a /tmp/python directory and the default is not overridden.

I think a good way to prevent this would be to replace the python_sandbox_path default with a randomly-generated directory, for instance using mktemp -d. Whether or not this sandbox dir is removed at the end of the playbook could be made configurable with a flag.

What do you think?