zwc files everywhere

[tcurdt]

IIUC zgenom compiles some of the shell scripts to speed up the execution.
I always thought this would be limited to just the zgenom files.
But somehow I end up with .zwc files all over my filesystem.

This is my setup:

export ZGEN_CUSTOM_COMPDUMP="${HOME}/.zcompdump-shodan2"
source "${HOME}/.zgenom/zgenom.zsh"
zgenom autoupdate
if ! zgenom saved; then

  echo "not saved"
  zgenom ohmyzsh
  zgenom ohmyzsh plugins/sudo
  zgenom ohmyzsh themes/daveverwer

  zgenom save

  zgenom compile "$HOME/.zshrc"
  zgenom compile $ZDOTDIR
fi

Now looking at this I was wondering if maybe ZDOTDIR could cause this.
And fair enough - it is empty.

Could this be cause by my zgenom setup?
According to the zsh folks this is by no means caused by zsh itself.

[jandamm]

Yes this could be an issue in the usage with zgenom.

Zgenom uses zcompile which only compiles one file.
zgenom compile accepts a file or a path. When given a path it'll compile all found files recursively.
So zgenom compile / would compile all files on your hard drive (probably error for all paths without write access).
It'll look for *.sh, *.zsh, compdumps and also check for zsh shebangs.

Zgenom internally only compiles itself, its cloned sources and the compdump if known. In your case $HOME/.zgenom and $HOME/.zcompdump-shodan2.

Assuming that $HOME/.zshrc exists and is a file I'd guess zgenom compile $ZDOTDIR is the issue.

So your $ZDOTDIR is unset ("") or is it set to an empty folder?
I would expect zgenom compile without a path/file to do nothing but maybe there is a bug 🤷‍♂️

[tcurdt]

Thanks for the quick help.

Yes, this is copied from my $HOME/.zshrc. And for me $ZDOTDIR is unset ("") .

It looks like the equivalent of zgenom compile / is getting called and causing this then.

So either zgenom compile is not a noop or at some time $ZDOTDIR had a value of / or maybe $HOME.

[jandamm]

I tested it today and zgenom compile $UNKNOWN_VARIABLE would create an error. So probably the $ZDOTDIR was set at one point.

You can also check the creation date of the zwc files. This should give an indication when it was compiled.

[tcurdt]

What should $ZDOTDIR point to?
I was wondering if I could just remove that line.

Thanks for helping with the debugging.

[jandamm]

Yes, if you don't set the $ZDOTDIR yourself just remove the line.
It's the directory zsh should look for the .zshrc etc. I've set it to .config/zsh.

Here is the reference:
https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html

I'll update the readme to clarify that this line should only be used if $ZDOTDIR is manually set.

[tcurdt]

Thanks for the help. This should have fixed it for me.