`use_git()` has a suboptimal dependence on the "active project"

[mine-cetinkaya-rundel]

I've created a new folder in Positron (labeled 1 in the screenshot below) and later decided to make it a repo with use_git(). usethis reports my user directory as the active folder (2) (presumably because there is no indicator in this folder like a .Rproj, .vscode, .git, etc.). But then it also reports the paths of files in my home directory incorrectly. (3)

Here is the path to the dotfile marked 3 in the screenshot.

• [Desktop/teaching/Duke/sta199-f25/ideas/.anyconnect](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html#)

[jennybc]

What version of rprojroot do you have? There was a brief period recently (the short-lived v2.1.0) where a change I made (and have since refined) could result in your home directory looking like a project root, if the local folder did not look like a project root.

v2.1.1 of rprojroot is on CRAN now and this should be fixed.

[mine-cetinkaya-rundel]

I was indeed on an older version of rprojroot. Updated that and usethis:

> packageVersion("usethis")
[1] ‘3.1.0’
> packageVersion("rprojroot")
[1] ‘2.1.1’

I'm still seeing the same issue though.

[jennybc]

I can't reproduce this. If I create a similar folder and open Positron in it, then try to use use_git(), I see this:

Now, arguably that's not terribly helpful either -- that the folder needs to "look like" a project before we do git init, but let's set that aside. We are clearly getting very different results.

I think your result suggests that your home directory "looks like" a project. Can you run here::dr_here() in /Users/mine to get some analysis of that?

[jennybc]

For the record, I see the same result in RStudio. I don't think this has anything to do with Positron.

[jennybc]

My current analysis: use_git() calls this the internal git_init() helper:

usethis/R/utils-git.R

Lines 41 to 43 in 0592077

	git_init <- function() {
	gert::git_init(proj_get())
	}

which calls proj_get(). My experience and @mine-cetinkaya-rundel's highlight the awkwardness of this:

• If the current working directory doesn't look like a project (using usethis's criteria for that), it will walk up the parent folders looking for a project.
• If something higher does look like a project (such as your home directory, somehow, in @mine-cetinkaya-rundel's case?), then we latch on to that. But that's probably not what you want and it's probably unfortunate/unintentional that that higher-level folder presents as a project root.
• If something higher does not look like a project, we fail to do git init (my case). But one of the ways we recognize a project is the presence of .git so this feels sort of circular in a bad way.

[jennybc]

I should add that the easiest workaround today is to quickly add .here in the folder where you want to do use_git() and go along your merry way.

> file.create(".here")
[1] TRUE
> use_git()
✔ Setting active project to "/Users/jenny/Desktop/ideas".
✔ Initialising Git repo.
✔ Adding ".Rproj.user", ".Rhistory", ".RData", ".httr-oauth", ".DS_Store", and ".quarto" to .gitignore.
ℹ There are 2 uncommitted files:
• .gitignore
• .here
! Is it ok to commit them?
...

[jennybc]

Also, the current version of usethis is 3.2.0. I don't think that's terribly important to this discussion, but it would be good for you to install that @mine-cetinkaya-rundel.

[mine-cetinkaya-rundel]

Yes, indeed this was true:

I think your result suggests that your home directory "looks like" a project. Can you run here::dr_here() in /Users/mine to get some analysis of that?

I don't know why there was a .git folder in my home directory, but I've removed it now and can confirm that I get the same proj_set() error, and adding .here resolves the issue.