failures setting path with devtools::dev_mode on windows

[martina]

I'm using devtools in an rmarkdown script to load packages from a specific folder. The folder lives in my C:/Users/myname/Documents folder, my home folder for tilde expansion.

The chunk below used to work but now throws an error:

> file.exists("~/R/GHmaster-library")
[1] TRUE

> if(file.exists( "~/R/GHmaster-library")){
  devtools::dev_mode(on=T, path = "~/R/GHmaster-library")}

Error: [ENOENT] Failed to realize 'C:/Users/Martina Morris/R/GHmaster-library': no such file or directory

So the ~ expansion works for the file.exists -- but not for the devtools expansion -- it's missing the Documents at the end of the expansion.

But forcing the right expansion with fs also doesn't work, and throws a different error:

> fs::path_expand_r("~/R/GHmaster-library")
C:/Users/Martina Morris/Documents/R/GHmaster-library

> file.exists(fs::path_expand_r("~/R/GHmaster-library"))
[1] TRUE

> if(file.exists( "~/R/GHmaster-library")){
    devtools::dev_mode(on=T, path = fs::path_expand_r("~/R/GHmaster-library"))}

Error in match.arg(type, names(directory_entry_types), several.ok = TRUE) : 'arg' should be one of “any”, “unknown”, “file”, “directory”, “symlink”, “FIFO”, “socket”, “character_device”, “block_device”

Googling that error doesn't bring up anything helpful So I'm hoping someone here might have some insight. Thx!

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.0.5 (2021-03-31)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19042)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] rmarkdown_2.7 knitr_1.33   

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] pillar_1.6.0      compiler_4.0.5    prettyunits_1.1.1 remotes_2.3.0     tools_4.0.5      
 [6] testthat_3.0.2    digest_0.6.27     pkgbuild_1.2.0    pkgload_1.2.1     evaluate_0.14    
[11] memoise_2.0.0     lifecycle_1.0.0   tibble_3.1.1      pkgconfig_2.0.3   rlang_0.4.11     
[16] cli_2.5.0         rstudioapi_0.13   xfun_0.22         fastmap_1.1.0     withr_2.4.2      
[21] desc_1.3.0        fs_1.5.0          vctrs_0.3.8       devtools_2.4.0    rprojroot_2.0.2  
[26] glue_1.4.2        R6_2.5.0          processx_3.5.2    fansi_0.4.2       sessioninfo_1.1.1
[31] purrr_0.3.4       callr_3.7.0       magrittr_2.0.1    ps_1.6.0          ellipsis_0.3.2   
[36] htmltools_0.5.1.1 usethis_2.0.1     utf8_1.2.1        cachem_1.0.4      crayon_1.4.1