collectstatic create self-referential symlink

[Aymeric Augustin]

This has happened twice on our CI server, but I'm not sure how.

Relevant settings:

STATICFILES_DIRS = ('/var/lib/jenkins/jobs/project-pr-endtoend/workspace/frontend/dist',)
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage'
STATIC_ROOT = '/var/lib/jenkins/jobs/project-pr-endtoend/workspace/project/static'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

Collectstatic command:

django-admin collectstatic --noinput --clear --link

(Possibly run several times in a row, with the same or different static files.)

We ended up with '/var/lib/jenkins/jobs/project-pr-endtoend/workspace/project/static/img/icon-sd3b7ad043d.png' which was a symlink to itself.

This prevented gunicorn from starting because we use whitenoise to serve static files, whitenoise scans the entire static directory on startup, and it couldn't stat a self-referential symlink.

This is quite surprising because:

• If I clear the directory and re-run collectstatic, I cannot reproduce the issue
• I expect --clear to wipe the directory first
• I don't expect --link to create a self-referential symlink

(This may end up as needsinfo if I don't dig into the details and we can't figure out the bug from the code. But even then it may help someone who stumbles upon the same problem.)

[Carlton Gibson]

This may end up as needsinfo...

Reviewing this, I can't reproduce with the details, so I think 6 years later we can say that a test case or project showing the issue to be Django's is probably needed.