Dotfiles option doesn't work with directories

[lhindir]

Paging @jvkersch in case he has any insight.

I use stow to manage my dotfiles. If I am trying to stow my config for zathura, I run stow --dotfiles zathura from ~/dotfiles, which contains zathura/dot-config/zathura/zathurarc. This outputs:

stow: ERROR: stow_contents() called with non-directory path: dotfiles/zathura/.config

I have no problem if I change the path to zathura/.config. Furthermore, stow --dotfiles bash works fine on the file bash/dot-bashrc. It only fails with directories.

I'll freely admit I know little of the internals here, so I'm sorry if I'm just misunderstanding how to use it. But the error message makes it seem like stow is converting the path before getting the path contents and stowing, when it should be getting the path contents, then converting the path, and finally stowing.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[aspiers]

Thanks for the report! I didn't implement --dotfiles, so would welcome some help triaging this one.

[bricewge]

I got bitten by this one too when trying the new release 2.3.0, following is more verbose log when the issue is triggered. Hopefully my comment isn't just seen as a noisy +1 and can help in debugging...

$ stow --ignore='^setup.sh' --ignore='^README.*' --ignore='^@.*'--ignore='^_.*' --target="$HOME" --no-folding --dotfiles alacritty --verbose=5
stow dir is /home/bricewge/project/dotfiles
stow dir path relative to target /home/bricewge is project/dotfiles
cwd now /home/bricewge
cwd restored to /home/bricewge/project/dotfiles
cwd now /home/bricewge
Planning stow of package alacritty...
. not protected
Stowing contents of project/dotfiles/alacritty (cwd=/home/bricewge)
  => project/dotfiles/alacritty
  is_a_node(.)
  link_task_action(.): no task
  dir_task_action(.): no task
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.): prefix
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.): returning false
  is_a_node(.): really exists
  Ignoring path _alacritty.terminfo due to --ignore=(?^:^_.*\z)
  Ignoring path setup.sh due to --ignore=(?^:^setup.sh\z)
  project/dotfiles/alacritty/.stow-local-ignore didn't exist
  /home/bricewge/.stow-global-ignore didn't exist
  Using built-in ignore list
    Ignore list regexp for paths:    /(?^:(^|/)(^/COPYING|^/LICENSE.*|^/README.*|^/\.stow\-local\-ignore$)(/|$))/
    Ignore list regexp for segments: /(?^:^(\.git|.+~|\.#.+|\.svn|CVS|#.*#|\.gitignore|_darcs|\.hg|\.cvsignore|.+,v|RCS)$)/
  Not ignoring dot-config
  Adjusting: dot-config => .config
Stowing project/dotfiles / alacritty / .config
  => project/dotfiles/alacritty/dot-config
  is_a_link(.config)
  link_task_action(.config): no task
  is_a_link(.config): returning 0
  is_a_node(.config)
  link_task_action(.config): no task
  dir_task_action(.config): no task
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.config): prefix .config
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.config): returning false
  is_a_node(.config): really exists
  Evaluate existing node: .config
  is_a_dir(.config)
  dir_task_action(.config): no task
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.config): prefix .config
    parent_link_scheduled_for_removal(.config): returning false
  is_a_dir(.config): real dir
.config not protected
Stowing contents of project/dotfiles/alacritty/.config (cwd=/home/bricewge)
  => ../project/dotfiles/alacritty/dot-config
stow: ERROR: stow_contents() called with non-directory path: project/dotfiles/alacritty/.config

[aspiers]

Definitely not noise, thanks a lot @bricewge for the extra debug! Unfortunately I'm now packing for a 2 week holiday so am unlikely to have time to look at this soon, but if anyone else can make headway in my absence that would be awesome :)

[jvkersch]

Apologies for not replying to the earlier report. I will try to reproduce and I'll see if I can make any headway before @aspiers returns from vacation.

[jvkersch]

I was able to reproduce, thanks all for the detailed info. I think we expand the stow directory too early on; my assumption when originally implementing this was that the dot- entries would be at the top-level in the stow directory, but this is not the case here. Will do some more digging.

[mattmc3]

In the mean time, I've been using --target and a separate stow directory for ~/.config as a work around:

stow -v --dotfiles --target=$HOME/.config stow-config

[gutierri]

I have this same structure, one way that works is to keep ~/dotfiles at the root of $ HOME and this command works (@lhindir):

$ (~/dotfiles) stow -R --dotfiles zathura/ -v
LINK: .config => laptop/zathura/dot-config

And yes, indeed there is a bug, because in my environment if I try to pass a target it returns this same message:

$ (~/dotfiles) stow -R --dotfiles -t ~ zathura/ -v
stow: ERROR: unstow_contents() called with non-directory path: Workspace/git.gutierri.me/laptop/zathura/.config

[NPastorale]

I just came across this bug. and read through this issue and #63. It's not a dealbreaker (at least not for my use case), but it would be nice to have this feature working. Is there any ETA for this fix?
Thanks!!

[rdrr]

Also, stow -D --dotfiles does not seem to work at all, even when files do not contain any "dot-filename" replacements.

We get the to:
Planning unstow of package *...done
but there is no
UNLINK: *
when normally unstowing a package.

To echo NPastorale, this would be a great feature. Thanks!