facebook/flow · error

failed to get current directory

Error message

failed to get current directory

What it means

For relative-path output, `flow ast` calls std::env::current_dir() and .expect("failed to get current directory") — failure panics the command. On Unix the canonical cause is that the process's working directory was deleted (or its permissions revoked) after the shell/tool started: getcwd() then fails with ENOENT because the path to the cwd no longer resolves.

Source

Thrown at rust_port/crates/flow_cli/src/ast_command.rs:287

        None
    } else {
        Some(&mut token_sink as &mut dyn FnMut(flow_parser::TokenSinkResult))
    };

    // Make the parser as permissive as possible.
    // TODO: make these CLI flags
    let parse_options = Some(ParseOptions {
        components: !no_component_syntax,
        enums: !no_enums,
        use_strict,
        ..PERMISSIVE_PARSE_OPTIONS
    });

    let filename = file.path_of_file_input().map(str::to_owned);
    let filename = if use_relative_path {
        filename.as_ref().map(|filename| {
            flow_common::files::relative_path(
                &std::env::current_dir().expect("failed to get current directory"),
                filename,
            )
        })
    } else {
        filename
    };

    let (ast, errors) = match file_type {
        AstFileType::FileJs => {
            // flow ast is a standalone parser - use the raw constructor
            // so paths are stored as-is without root stripping.
            let filekey = filename
                .clone()
                .map(|filename| FileKey::new(FileKeyInner::SourceFile(filename)));
            let (ocaml_ast, errors) = match filekey.clone() {
                Some(filekey) => flow_parser::parse_program_file::<()>(
                    false,
                    token_sink,

View on GitHub (pinned to f88ac94bcf)

Solutions

1. cd into an existing directory and rerun the command.
2. Recreate the deleted directory, or restart the shell/editor/daemon so it picks up a valid cwd.
3. In scripts and long-running tools, avoid anchoring to directories that other jobs delete.

Example fix

# before: shell still sits in a directory that was deleted
cd /tmp/gone-build && flow ast --filename x.js   # panics: failed to get current directory

# after: move to a live directory first
cd "$HOME" && flow ast --filename /real/path/x.js

# Run before invoking Flow from a possibly-stale shell or daemon.
pwd >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "cwd is gone: cd to an existing directory first"

When it happens

Trigger: Invoking flow ast with relative-path output from a shell, editor, or daemon whose cwd was deleted after it started — another terminal rm -rf of a build dir, a clean step removing the checkout, container layer removal.

Common situations: A terminal left sitting in a removed build/output directory; scripts that cd into temp dirs later cleaned by another job; CI steps running after the workspace directory was wiped; editors launched from a since-deleted directory.

Related errors

• failed to read stdin
• invalid line
• invalid column
• failed to get current directory
• failed to write json errors

AI-assisted analysis of facebook/flow@f88ac94bcf (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/aa25859d237fc4f2. Report an issue: GitHub.