Hey folks! A number of situations have arisen in which the default value of the Mesos agent `--work_dir` flag (/tmp/mesos) has caused problems on systems in which the automatic cleanup of '/tmp' deletes agent metadata. To resolve this, we would like to eliminate the default value of the agent `--work_dir` flag. You can find the relevant JIRA here <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MESOS-5064>.
We considered simply changing the default value to a more appropriate location, but decided against this because the expected filesystem structure varies from platform to platform, and because it isn't guaranteed that the Mesos agent would have access to the default path on a particular platform. Eliminating the default `--work_dir` value means that the agent would exit immediately if the flag is not provided, whereas currently it launches successfully in this case. This will break existing infrastructure which relies on launching the Mesos agent without specifying the work directory. I believe this is an acceptable change because '/tmp/mesos' is not a suitable location for the agent work directory except for short-term local testing, and any production scenario that is currently using this location should be altered immediately. If you have any thoughts/opinions/concerns regarding this change, please let us know! Cheers, Greg
