OpenStudio temp dir errors due to collisions

[shorowit]

Issue overview

The ResStock team has been seeing intermittent errors like this:

/__w/get-resstock/get-resstock/resources/hpxml-measures/HPXMLtoOpenStudio/resources/xmlvalidator.rb:23: [BUG] Segmentation fault at 0x00007fea7d60c88d [1000](https://github.com/NREL/get-resstock/actions/runs/4379849953/jobs/7666240835#step:5:1001)ruby 2.7.2p137 (2020-10-01 revision 5445e04352) [x86_64-linux] [1001](https://github.com/NREL/get-resstock/actions/runs/4379849953/jobs/7666240835#step:5:1002) [1002](https://github.com/NREL/get-resstock/actions/runs/4379849953/jobs/7666240835#step:5:1003)-- Control frame information ----------------------------------------------- [1003](https://github.com/NREL/get-resstock/actions/runs/4379849953/jobs/7666240835#step:5:1004)c:0023 p:---- s:0231 e:000230 CFUNC  :validate [1004](https://github.com/NREL/get-resstock/actions/runs/4379849953/jobs/7666240835#step:5:1005)c:0022 p:0033 s:0226 e:000225 METHOD /__w/get-resstock/get-resstock/resources/hpxml-measures/HPXMLtoOpenStudio/resources/xmlvalidator.rb:23

and

Building ID: 160. Upgrade Name: Baseline. Job ID: 1. [6642](https://github.com/NREL/resstock/actions/runs/4387659768/jobs/7683221795#step:5:6643)[openstudio.measure.OSRunner] <1> Cannot find current Workflow Step [6643](https://github.com/NREL/resstock/actions/runs/4387659768/jobs/7683221795#step:5:6644)[openstudio.measure.OSRunner] <1> Cannot find current Workflow Step [6644](https://github.com/NREL/resstock/actions/runs/4387659768/jobs/7683221795#step:5:6645)[openstudio.XMLValidator] <2> Writing to file failed for /tmp/xmlvalidation-1678478194-0/EPvalidator_stylesheet.xslt

The second error message in particular suggests that there is some kind of collision happening related to the XSLT file created for Schematron validation.

Looking at the source code, this appears like it might be the culprit:

OpenStudio/src/utilities/core/FilesystemHelpers.cpp

Line 174 in 433e0de

filename += openstudio::toPath("-" + std::to_string(std::time(nullptr)) + "-" + std::to_string(count++));

If you are running lots of simulations in parallel, it appears that two OS CLIs can have temp dir collisions.

@nmerket @joseph-robertson

[shorowit]

Note that we were able to successfully work around the issue by providing our own temporary dir to OpenStudio for XSLT generation when performing Schematron validation.

It looks like gbxml also uses this openstudio::filesystem::create_temporary_directory method, so that might be similarly impacted?

[wnykuang]

Found a niche in reading the snippet, under the while loop:

OpenStudio/src/utilities/core/FilesystemHelpers.cpp

Line 171 in 42683d6

while (attempts < allowed_attempts) {

The attempts hasn't been updated.