Resolve configdir to handle potential issues with inaccessible symlinks

hintron · greglucas · hintron · commit 957271f83f80 · 2024-09-13T23:45:55.000-07:00
There are some use cases where a user might have a symlinked home directory
(e.g. a corporate home directory may be symlinked to a disk with limited
space, and is only accessible to other users via a real path to the
underlying disk).
Resolving configdir before any mkdir or access checks should avoid this
problem.

Co-authored-by: Greg Lucas &lt;greg.m.lucas@gmail.com&gt;
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py b/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py
@@ -519,13 +519,15 @@ def _get_xdg_cache_dir():
 def _get_config_or_cache_dir(xdg_base_getter):
     configdir = os.environ.get('MPLCONFIGDIR')
     if configdir:
-        configdir = Path(configdir).resolve()
+        configdir = Path(configdir)
     elif sys.platform.startswith(('linux', 'freebsd')):
         # Only call _xdg_base_getter here so that MPLCONFIGDIR is tried first,
         # as _xdg_base_getter can throw.
         configdir = Path(xdg_base_getter(), "matplotlib")
     else:
         configdir = Path.home() / ".matplotlib"
+    # Resolve the path to handle potential issues with inaccessible symlinks.
+    configdir = configdir.resolve()
     try:
         configdir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
     except OSError:
