`remove_path` method behaviour in `pebble`

The remove_path method in pebble has an optional argument recursive: bool = False:

def remove_path(self, path: str, *, recursive: bool = False):

Let’s say that you need to delete a file from a container’s directory. But it’s possible that the file you trying to delete it is not yet in the directory.

If you have:

container.remove_path(path)

You will get a PathError exception since the file does not exist. This makes sense, it is behaviourally similar to rm <file>:

➜  rm pepe.txt
rm: cannot remove 'pepe.txt': No such file or directory

But there is no explicit option that behaves similar to rm -f <file> (do nothing if the files is non-existent):

➜  rm -f pepe.txt
➜

Anyway you can achieve that behaviour by using recursive=True

container.remove_path(path, recursive=True)

recursive=True behaves in 2 ways:

• If path is a directory recursively deletes it and everything under it.
• If the path is a file, delete the file and do nothing if the file is non-existent. Behaviourally similar to rm -rf <file|dir>

Using recursive=True when trying to delete a file and do nothing if file is non-existent (rm -f <file>) is a little bit confusing.

Shouldn’t we try to mimic the rm behaviour where we have: -r for recursive and -f for “ignore nonexistent files and arguments, never prompt”?

[pengale]

I suspect that a lot of people using the lib would just pass -f, and create their own problems detecting typos.

I like the simplicity of having the library work one way, with my preferred way being to remove a path if it exists, and log a warning if it does not. (The warning gives typo makers a chance to catch their error.)

[pengale]

Thank you for filing this!