remove_items silently fails on broken symlinks

[ukautz]

Currently fs_extra::remove_items does not act on symlinks that point to not-existing targets. It is not clear from the documentation what the intended behavior is, so I am not sure if this asks for fixing, or just documenting.

Reproduce

Assume a directory that contains symlinks, both to existing and non-existing targets:

mkdir dir/
touch dir/file-1
ln -s dir/file-1 dir/link-1
ln -s dir/file-2 dir/link-2

A minimal rust program for reproduction:

fn main() {
    for arg in std::env::args().skip(1) {
        let path = Path::new(&arg);
        println!("Removing path {:?}", path);
        match fs_extra::remove_items(&[path]) {
            Ok(_) => println!(" -> OK"),
            Err(err) => println!(" -> Err: {}", err)
        }
    }
}

And then:

$ tree dir
dir
├── file-1
├── link-1 -> file-1
└── link-2 -> file-2

1 directory, 3 files


$ cargo run -- dir/link*
Removing path "dir/link-1"
 -> OK
Removing path "dir/link-2"
 -> OK


$ tree dir              
dir
├── file-1
└── link-2 -> file-2

1 directory, 2 files

(above tested on MacOS and Linux)

Expected

Up to the maintainers of the library:

1. Remove All: Delete all provided paths. Here: link-1 and link-2 are both removed. file-1 stays (unchanged).
2. Document Symlink: Be clear that remove_items has caveat (or maybe more broadly: recommend not to use with symlinks?)
3. Error: Return an error in case symlink is "unclean" (is that a thing?)

I think (1) makes the most sense. Alas this was my expectation when using remove_items.

Causal

• remove_items uses file::remove, in case the item is not a directory
• file::remove only removes when the path exists
• Check whether path exists is done via std::path::Path::exists, that evaluates the symlink target (which here is missing) and not the symlink itself