Steps to reproduce

The build directory doesn't persist or is deleted randomly for developed specs in an anonymous environment.

Here is a minimal reproducer:

wget https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/lzmautils/files/xz-5.4.6.tar.bz2
tar xf xz-5.4.6.tar.bz2
spack env create xz
spack -e xz add xz
spack -e xz develop -p $(realpath xz-5.4.6) [email protected]
spack -e xz install
# obtain the build directory
spack -e xz location -b

Error message

Previously this would have created a build directory in the source directory spack-build-<hash>. If I understood correctly, #41373 changed this, now the build directory is created in config:build_stage and a symlink is created in the source tree instead.

When adding:

config:
    build_stage: ./stage

to spack.yaml in the environment, the build directory is deleted immediately after installation.

In case I don't change config:build_stage, the build directory sometimes persists in /tmp, although it's not clear under which conditions/why, it seems to get deleted randomly at some later point (e.g. when running an arbitrary spack command).

The current behavior isn't very useful for a developer workflow:

1. building from scratch is slow
2. it's difficult to obtain compile_commands.json or similar to use with an IDE

Information on your system

• Spack: 0.22.0.dev0 (e5fdb90)
• Python: 3.11.8
• Platform: linux-arch-skylake
• Concretizer: clingo

General information

• I have run spack debug report and reported the version of Spack/Python/Platform
• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe this is not a duplicate
• I have run the failing commands in debug mode and reported the output