Sharp write error with Chinese username on Windows when using .toBuffer()or .toFile()

[Tithy]

Problem Description
We're encountering a write error when using Sharp for image processing on Windows systems (both Win10 and Win11) where the username contains Chinese characters.

[Tithy]

Error: VipsImage: unable to write to "C:\Users\�����˻�\AppData\Local\Temp\vips-0-3148017085.v"
windows error: �豸��ʶ������

Note: The garbled characters in the error message are likely Chinese text that got encoding issues. Based on common Windows errors, �豸��ʶ������probably translates to "Device not ready" or "Device not recognized".

Environment
Platform: Windows 10 & Windows 11

Node.js: 16.14.2

Sharp: 0.30.2

Electron: 19.1.9

User Profile: Contains Chinese characters in the username

// Approach 1: Using .toBuffer()
const data = await sharp(filePath, {
limitInputPixels: false,
})
.rotate(rotate)
.extract(cropAction)
.resize(sizeW, sizeH)
.jpeg({ quality: 100 })
.withMetadata(metaData)
.toBuffer();
await fs.writeFile(tmpFile, data);

// Approach 2: Using .toFile()
await sharp(filePath, {
limitInputPixels: false,
})
.rotate(rotate)
.extract(cropAction)
.resize(sizeW, sizeH)
.jpeg({ quality: 100 })
.withMetadata(metaData)
.toFile(tmpFile);

[lovell]

Sharp: 0.30.2

Please upgrade to the latest version.

[kleisauke]

Upstream PR libvips/libvips#4721 should fix this. As a workaround for now, you can set the TMPDIR environment variable.

[Tithy]

Thank you for confirming the issue in #4470.
We've implemented the suggested workaround of setting TMPDIR to an ASCII-only path, which resolves the issue.

Thanks for your great work on sharp!

[kleisauke]

Note that the TMPDIR environment variable is not limited to ASCII characters. It supports Unicode paths as well as system variables such as %LocalAppData%\Temp or %Temp% (which both expand to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp). See for example:

$ C:\Users\☃\Downloads\vips-dev-w64-web-8.17.3-static\vips-dev-8.17\bin\vips.exe rotate st-francis.jpg x.jpg 90 --vips-progress
vips.exe temp-24: 26319 x 30000 pixels, 4 threads, 128 x 128 tiles, 128 lines in buffer
vips.exe temp-24: done in 0,0219s
VipsImage: unable to write to "C:\Users\?\AppData\Local\Temp\vips-0-1593240234.v"
system error: Invalid argument
$ set TMPDIR=%Temp%
$ C:\Users\☃\Downloads\vips-dev-w64-web-8.17.3-static\vips-dev-8.17\bin\vips.exe rotate st-francis.jpg x.jpg 90 --vips-progress
vips.exe temp-24: 26319 x 30000 pixels, 4 threads, 128 x 128 tiles, 128 lines in buffer
vips.exe st-francis.jpg: 30000 x 26319 pixels, 4 threads, 30000 x 16 tiles, 128 lines in buffer
vips.exe st-francis.jpg: done in 11,6s
vips.exe temp-24: done in 216s