Relative path to the build directory is treated like absolute

[ClaudiuCreanga]

When using the command line:
python manage.py build report.views.RenderView --build-dir ./build
bakery tries to create the top level directory /build and fails because of permissions.
fs.errors.PermissionDenied: permission denied mkdir: ./build: No such file or directory

It should instead create it in the current directory because there is a dot in front.

Is this by design?

It is not something that one cannot get around, but when using singularity and some workflow systems (nextflow), using absolute paths may become messy, as you're working with isolated directories.

[palewire]

Interesting. The code that makes it happen is right here:

    def init_build_dir(self):
        """
        Clear out the build directory and create a new one.
        """
        # Destroy the build directory, if it exists
        logger.debug("Initializing %s" % self.build_dir)
        if self.verbosity > 1:
            self.stdout.write("Initializing build directory")
        if self.fs.exists(self.build_dir):
            self.fs.removetree(self.build_dir)
        # Then recreate it from scratch
        self.fs.makedirs(self.build_dir)

Anything look off?

[ClaudiuCreanga]

That will always assume a full path.
To care for relative paths, if it is something that you want, we can use these:

os.path.realpath can handle absolute and relative paths
os.path.expanduser will handle cases involving "~"

So something like this:
self.fs.makedirs(os.path.realpath(os.path.expanduser("self.build_dir")))

[palewire]

Okay. I'm open to a change along these lines, but I'd like to add some testing to verify its working now and in the future. What different path inputs could you imagine we should test for?

[ClaudiuCreanga]

I would think these:

/directory
/directory/directory

~/
~/directory

./
./directory

../
../directory
../../directory

a symlink directory

Can't think of anything else.

[palewire]

@ClaudiuCreanga, would you be interested in developing a patch to solve this problem?