Fix a model being listed repeatedly when a model directory links back to an ancestor

[ntdat812]

Problem

If a model directory contains a link back to one of its own ancestors, the same model is listed over and over in every model dropdown.

recursive_search walks with followlinks=True, which is deliberate — extra_model_paths.yaml exists so people can link shared model directories in. But os.walk does not detect a link that points at an ancestor, so the walk re-enters the same tree at every level.

Measured with one real checkpoint and checkpoints/all linked to its own root:

count: 12
   checkpoints\model.safetensors
   checkpoints\all\checkpoints\model.safetensors
   checkpoints\all\checkpoints\all\checkpoints\model.safetensors
   checkpoints\all\checkpoints\all\checkpoints\all\checkpoints\model.safetensors
   ...
unique real files: 1

Twelve entries for one file. Worth being precise about the number: it is 12 only because Windows stops resolving past MAX_PATH — nothing in the walk itself ends the cycle, so on a filesystem without that limit it keeps going until something else stops it. I measured on Windows and have not measured how far it runs elsewhere, so I am not going to claim "hangs on Linux"; what I can show is that the termination is accidental rather than by design.

This is easy to reach by accident: a checkpoints/all convenience link, a shared network models folder mounted inside another, or two extra_model_paths.yaml roots that overlap through a link.

Change

recursive_search records the realpath of each directory as it walks and skips one it has already entered.

visited_real_dirs = {os.path.realpath(directory)}
...
    real_subdir = os.path.realpath(os.path.join(dirpath, d))
    if real_subdir in visited_real_dirs:
        continue
    visited_real_dirs.add(real_subdir)

followlinks=True stays. The guard stops revisiting, not following — a link into a separate tree is walked exactly as before. excluded_dir_names is unchanged, and the loop that applies it is now the same loop, so exclusion and cycle-skipping cannot drift apart.

os.path.realpath can raise on an unreadable path, so that is caught and the entry skipped with a warning, matching how the surrounding code already handles FileNotFoundError from getmtime.

Testing

Three tests in tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py:

• a link back to an ancestor yields the one real file once — fails on master (12 entries)
• a link into a separate tree is still followed — the guard must not over-correct
• excluded_dir_names still excludes, since that loop was rewritten

The link helper prefers os.symlink and falls back to a junction on Windows, where symlink creation needs an elevated process; os.walk follows both, so the cycle hazard is the same either way. It skips only if neither is possible.

Reverting only folder_paths.py: 1 failed, 16 passed. With the change: 17 passed. Whole directory: pytest tests-unit/ --continue-on-collection-errors → 275 passed, 1 skipped, unchanged from master. ruff check clean.

Same caveat as my other PR: 38 test modules fail to collect here because torch and the model-runtime dependencies are not installed, identical before and after. This change is in a pure-Python path helper, but I did not run them and am not claiming they pass.

Relationship to #15779

Independent — both touch folder_paths.py but different functions (recursive_search here, get_save_image_path there), so they merge in either order without conflict.

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tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py (1)

4-7: LGTM!

Also applies to: 101-120, 123-140, 143-152, 155-189, 192-201

---

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

recursive_search now resolves candidate subdirectories and tracks visited real paths. It skips unresolved paths, repeated directories, and excluded directory names while preserving traversal into separate linked trees. Tests add cross-platform symlink or junction creation and cover ancestor cycles, separate linked trees, unresolved directories, and exclusions.

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to e3fdd

This localized change prevents recursive model-directory links from listing the same model repeatedly while preserving valid linked-directory traversal. No actionable merge-blocking risk remains after normal checks and review.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 44.44% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 9 functions across 2 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly identifies the main change: preventing repeated model listings caused by links from model directories to ancestors.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description directly explains the repeated-listing problem, implementation, tests, and validation results for this changeset.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Inline comments:
In `@folder_paths.py`:
- Around line 428-432: Update the real_subdir resolution in the directory
traversal logic to call os.path.realpath with strict=True, ensuring missing or
inaccessible linked directories raise OSError and reach the existing
warning-and-skip handling. Preserve the current exception behavior and logging
in the surrounding try/except block.

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**/*: Keep changes small, direct, and limited to the narrowest necessary code path and smallest number of files.
Prefer practical fixes, minimal dependencies, and existing repository patterns; remove obsolete, dead, unreachable, or unused code.
Preserve existing APIs, node names, model-loading behavior, file layout, and workflow compatibility unless replacement is explicitly intended.
Core ComfyUI must not add outbound internet requests, telemetry, tracking, reporting, remote configuration, or background network activity. User-authorized model downloads are limited to the requested artifact and must exclude telemetry and unrelated metadata.

Files:

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**/*.py

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

**/*.py: Keep state and capability flags on the object that owns the behavior. Prefer explicit parent-owned attributes over probing child objects with getattr; use child checks only when the child owns the delegated behavior.
Preserve shared method signatures, argument order, return shapes, side effects, and error behavior unless every affected caller and interface is intentionally updated.
Do not add unused compatibility parameters, flags, attributes, constructor options, or model-specific options to shared helpers; keep one-off behavior at the integration boundary.
Normalize third-party return conventions at integration boundaries so core code receives the expected type and shape; avoid undocumented caller-side unwrapping.
Do not add torch.no_grad, torch.inference_mode, or inference-mode wrappers. Do not add model freeze/unfreeze toggles; only disable globally enabled inference mode when a training path requires gradients.
Remove inference-only training behavior such as dropout while preserving checkpoint and state-dict compatibility; use nn.Identity when deleting a module would alter keys or ordering.
Keep imports at module scope except established optional-backend probes or imports required to avoid cycles; avoid unnecessary try/except blocks and use specific exceptions with useful fallbacks.
Do not add workarounds for unsupported library versions, especially PyTorch exception-and-float-cast retries, unless a comment names the exact versions still requiring them.
Let unsupported model formats, invalid quantization metadata, and bad states fail with clear errors instead of silently degrading output.
Match local style, keep comments sparse and useful, and remove comments that merely restate obvious code.
Treat dtype, device placement, VRAM use, and offloading as correctness concerns across CPU, CUDA, ROCm, MPS, DirectML, XPU, NPU, and low-VRAM environments.
Prefer existing ComfyUI and Comfy Kitchen operations, quantization helpers, cast/offload helpe...

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• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

**/*.{py,json}

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

Treat legacy combo, io.Combo, and io.DynamicCombo values affecting filesystem access as untrusted; revalidate them at load/save boundaries with folder_paths, containment checks, or fixed allowlists.

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

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tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

[error] 114-116: Command coming from incoming request
Context: subprocess.run(
["cmd", "/c", "mklink", "/J", link, target], capture_output=True, text=True
)
Note: [CWE-78] Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command ('OS Command Injection').

(subprocess-from-request)

---

[warning] 131-131: File path is request-/variable-derived; validate and normalize to prevent path traversal.
Context: open(os.path.join(checkpoints, "model.safetensors"), "w")
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(open-filename-from-request)

---

[warning] 156-156: File path is request-/variable-derived; validate and normalize to prevent path traversal.
Context: open(os.path.join(temp_dir, "keep", "a.txt"), "w")
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(open-filename-from-request)

---

[warning] 157-157: File path is request-/variable-derived; validate and normalize to prevent path traversal.
Context: open(os.path.join(temp_dir, "skipme", "b.txt"), "w")
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(open-filename-from-request)

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tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py (1)

6-6: LGTM!

Also applies to: 101-119, 122-163

[ntdat812]

Correct, and it was worse than "ineffective" — strict=False does not just skip the raise, it invents a path:

os.path.realpath('/tmp/xxx/nope/deeper')                -> '/tmp/xxx/nope/deeper'   (fabricated)
os.path.realpath('/tmp/xxx/nope/deeper', strict=True)   -> OSError FileNotFoundError

So an unresolvable directory would have been added to visited_real_dirs under a path that does not exist, and the except OSError branch was dead code. Fixed in 6bdc208; strict=True is available on the project's minimum (requires-python = ">=3.10").

Added test_recursive_search_skips_a_directory_it_cannot_resolve, which forces realpath to raise for one subdirectory and asserts the walk still returns the other one's file.

To be precise about what that test does and does not prove: it patches realpath, so it passes with or without strict=True — it is branch coverage plus "one bad directory does not abort the walk", not evidence that strict is required. The evidence for strict is the two-line comparison above. A naturally-unresolvable directory is hard to reach from a test because os.walk classifies a dangling directory link as a file, not a subdirectory, so it never reaches this code path; the realistic triggers are a mid-walk deletion or a permission error, neither of which is worth simulating with real filesystem state.

Suite: reverting only folder_paths.py gives 2 failed, 16 passed; with the change 18 passed. Whole directory unchanged at 276 passed, 1 skipped. ruff check clean.

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Inline comments:
In `@tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py`:
- Around line 167-175: Update the recursive_search test around the realpath mock
to assert that the bad-path invocation receives strict=True, and capture the
emitted warning to verify it contains “Unable to resolve bad.” Preserve the
existing file and directory result assertions.

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**/*

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

**/*: Keep changes small, direct, and limited to the narrowest necessary code path and smallest number of files.
Prefer practical fixes, minimal dependencies, and existing repository patterns; remove obsolete, dead, unreachable, or unused code.
Preserve existing APIs, node names, model-loading behavior, file layout, and workflow compatibility unless replacement is explicitly intended.
Core ComfyUI must not add outbound internet requests, telemetry, tracking, reporting, remote configuration, or background network activity. User-authorized model downloads are limited to the requested artifact and must exclude telemetry and unrelated metadata.

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

**/*.py

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

**/*.py: Keep state and capability flags on the object that owns the behavior. Prefer explicit parent-owned attributes over probing child objects with getattr; use child checks only when the child owns the delegated behavior.
Preserve shared method signatures, argument order, return shapes, side effects, and error behavior unless every affected caller and interface is intentionally updated.
Do not add unused compatibility parameters, flags, attributes, constructor options, or model-specific options to shared helpers; keep one-off behavior at the integration boundary.
Normalize third-party return conventions at integration boundaries so core code receives the expected type and shape; avoid undocumented caller-side unwrapping.
Do not add torch.no_grad, torch.inference_mode, or inference-mode wrappers. Do not add model freeze/unfreeze toggles; only disable globally enabled inference mode when a training path requires gradients.
Remove inference-only training behavior such as dropout while preserving checkpoint and state-dict compatibility; use nn.Identity when deleting a module would alter keys or ordering.
Keep imports at module scope except established optional-backend probes or imports required to avoid cycles; avoid unnecessary try/except blocks and use specific exceptions with useful fallbacks.
Do not add workarounds for unsupported library versions, especially PyTorch exception-and-float-cast retries, unless a comment names the exact versions still requiring them.
Let unsupported model formats, invalid quantization metadata, and bad states fail with clear errors instead of silently degrading output.
Match local style, keep comments sparse and useful, and remove comments that merely restate obvious code.
Treat dtype, device placement, VRAM use, and offloading as correctness concerns across CPU, CUDA, ROCm, MPS, DirectML, XPU, NPU, and low-VRAM environments.
Prefer existing ComfyUI and Comfy Kitchen operations, quantization helpers, cast/offload helpe...

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

**/*.{py,json}

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

Treat legacy combo, io.Combo, and io.DynamicCombo values affecting filesystem access as untrusted; revalidate them at load/save boundaries with folder_paths, containment checks, or fixed allowlists.

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

**/*.{py,md,txt,json}

📄 CodeRabbit inference engine (AGENTS.md)

Keep warning and info messages short and actionable, remove noisy or misleading logging, and make documentation edits concise, factual, and tied to changed behavior.

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

**

⚙️ CodeRabbit configuration file

**: IMPORTANT: Only comment on issues directly introduced by this PR's code changes.
Treat AGENTS.md as mandatory repository policy, not optional style guidance.
Flag PR changes that violate AGENTS.md even when the code is otherwise functional.
In particular, enforce architecture boundaries, dtype/device/memory rules,
interface contracts, import style, no unnecessary try/except blocks, no inline
imports, no outbound internet paths in core ComfyUI, and narrow scoped fixes.
Prefer direct findings over suggestions when a rule is violated. Only ignore
AGENTS.md when it clearly conflicts with a newer explicit maintainer instruction
in the PR.
Do NOT flag pre-existing issues in code that was merely moved, re-indented,
de-indented, or reformatted without logic changes. If code appears in the diff
only due to whitespace or structural reformatting (e.g., removing a with: block),
treat it as unchanged. Contributors should not feel obligated to address
pre-existing issues outside the scope of their contribution.

Files:

• folder_paths.py
• tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

🪛 ast-grep (0.45.1)

tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py

[warning] 163-163: File path is request-/variable-derived; validate and normalize to prevent path traversal.
Context: open(os.path.join(temp_dir, "good", "a.txt"), "w")
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(open-filename-from-request)

---

[warning] 164-164: File path is request-/variable-derived; validate and normalize to prevent path traversal.
Context: open(os.path.join(temp_dir, "bad", "b.txt"), "w")
Note: [CWE-22] Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal').

(open-filename-from-request)

🔇 Additional comments (3)

folder_paths.py (2)

416-420: LGTM!

Also applies to: 423-440

---

421-421: 🎯 Functional Correctness

Do not flag line 421.

visited_real_dirs = {os.path.realpath(directory)} is unchanged by this PR. The PR only changes child-directory resolution.

			> Likely an incorrect or invalid review comment.

tests-unit/comfy_test/folder_path_test.py (1)

6-6: LGTM!

Also applies to: 100-120, 122-139, 142-151, 180-189

[ntdat812]

Both added in e3fdd82 — and this is the assertion my previous reply said was missing, so thanks for closing it rather than letting it stand.

The test now records the strict flag per resolved subdirectory and asserts the warning text:

assert strict_by_name["bad"] is True
assert strict_by_name["good"] is True
assert "Unable to resolve bad" in caplog.text

It is load-bearing now: removing strict=True from folder_paths.py fails it with assert None is True, where before it passed either way.

One detail worth recording, because writing the assertion surfaced it. The captured flags came back [None, True, True] — the first call is the root, resolved once before the walk as os.path.realpath(directory) without strict. I left it that way rather than making it uniform: recursive_search returns early on if not os.path.isdir(directory) three lines above, so the root is already known to exist, and making it strict would add an uncaught raise at the top of the function on a race with nothing catching it. The assertion is therefore scoped to the subdirectory calls, with that reason in a comment.

Suite: reverting only folder_paths.py gives 2 failed, 16 passed; with the change 18 passed. Whole directory 276 passed, 1 skipped, unchanged. ruff check clean.