usethis::create_package() fails in temporary directory

[kevinushey]

> usethis::create_package("/tmp/project")
Error in `check_path_is_directory()`:
✖ private/tmp is not a directory.
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
Running under: macOS 15.0

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.4-arm64/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.4-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.0

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

time zone: America/Los_Angeles
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] compiler_4.4.1  magrittr_2.0.3  cli_3.6.3       tools_4.4.1
 [5] pillar_1.9.0    fs_1.6.4        glue_1.8.0      tibble_3.2.1
 [9] utf8_1.2.4      fansi_1.0.6     vctrs_0.6.5     usethis_3.0.0
[13] lifecycle_1.0.4 pkgconfig_2.0.3 rlang_1.1.4     purrr_1.0.2

The problem here occurs because /tmp is a symlink to private/tmp, but it doesn't get resolved correctly. Here:

usethis/R/directory.R

Lines 42 to 44 in b4e8477

	if (is_link(path)) {
	path <- link_path(path)
	}

But:

Browse[1]> fs::link_path("/tmp")
private/tmp

Note that the link path is relative, not absolute, and so needs to be interpreted relative to the directory holding the symlink.

kevin@MBP-P2MQ:/
$ ll | grep tmp
lrwxr-xr-x@  1 root  wheel    11B Sep  5 13:54 tmp@ -> private/tmp

[kevinushey]

The simplest solution here is probably just to use normalizePath() or the fs equivalent here?

[jennybc]

The simplest solution here is probably just to use normalizePath() or the fs equivalent here?simplest solution here is probably just to use normalizePath()

History has shown that nothing is very simple about path handling here 😬 but yes it seems reasonable that create_package() would be happy to function inside the temp directory.