DESCRIPTION can break test_r()

[kamilzyla]

Steps to reproduce

1. Initialize a fresh Rhino app.
2. In the parent directory create a DESCRIPTION file with the following content:

   Package: whatever
   Config/testthat/edition: 3
   Config/testthat/parallel: true
   

3. Run rhino::test_r() inside the Rhino app directory.

Bug description

The rhino::test_r() function fails to run with an error along the lines:

> rhino::test_r()
Starting 1 test process
✔ | F W S  OK | Context
⠼ [ FAIL 0 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 0 ] Starting up...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Error in `private$handle_error()`:
! testthat subprocess failed to start, stderr:
Error in idesc_get_version(self, private) : No ‘Version’ field found
Calls: callr_startup_hook ... desc_desc_get_version -> <Anonymous> -> idesc_get_version
Caused by error:
! R session crashed with exit code 1
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.

Expected behavior

The rhino::test_r() function should run normally. A DESCRIPTION file in a parent directory of a Rhino app should not affect it in any way.

Rhino diagnostics

Linux 4.9.0-19-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.320-2 (2022-06-30)
R version 4.1.1 (2021-08-10)
rhino: 1.3.1
node: v16.20.0

Comments

The problems seems to boil down to this: testthat::test_dir() (called by rhino::test_r()) ascends to ancestor directories trying to find a DESCRIPTION file to read some config from it. This is undesirable in our case and caused a headache when working on #58 (see this comment).

The following shell script can be used to reproduce the problem without involving Rhino (checked with testthat 3.1.7):

mkdir app
touch app/test-app.R

Rscript -e 'testthat::test_dir("app")' # Works fine

cat <<EOF >DESCRIPTION
Package: whatever
Config/testthat/edition: 3
Config/testthat/parallel: true
EOF

Rscript -e 'testthat::test_dir("app")' # Fails

The full error is as follows:

Starting 1 test process
✔ | F W S  OK | Context
⠸ [ FAIL 0 | WARN 0 | SKIP 0 | PASS 0 ] Starting up...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Error in `private$handle_error()`:
! testthat subprocess failed to start, stderr:
Error in idesc_get_version(self, private) : No ‘Version’ field found
Calls: callr_startup_hook ... desc_desc_get_version -> <Anonymous> -> idesc_get_version
Caused by error:
! R session crashed with exit code 1
Backtrace:
     ▆
  1. └─testthat::test_dir("app")
  2.   └─testthat:::test_files(...)
  3.     └─testthat:::test_files_parallel(...)
  4.       ├─testthat::with_reporter(...)
  5.       │ └─base::tryCatch(...)
  6.       │   └─base (local) tryCatchList(expr, classes, parentenv, handlers)
  7.       │     └─base (local) tryCatchOne(expr, names, parentenv, handlers[[1L]])
  8.       │       └─base (local) doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
  9.       └─testthat:::parallel_event_loop_smooth(queue, reporters)
 10.         └─queue$poll(poll_time)
 11.           └─base::lapply(...)
 12.             └─testthat (local) FUN(X[[i]], ...)
 13.               └─private$handle_error(msg, i)
 14.                 └─rlang::abort(...)
Execution halted