Windows drive roots like D:\ or E:\ cannot be opened as checkout workspaces (EPERM: mkdir 'D:\')

[dodjdnh]

Hi, I ran into an issue on Windows when trying to open a drive root as a checkout workspace.

For example, my config allows both D:\ and E:\, and opening normal subdirectories works fine:

E:\MinerU
D:\Book-Mathematical-Foundation-of-Reinforcement-Learning
E:\Obsidian仓库\RL学习

But opening the drive root itself fails:

open_workspace
path = "D:\\"
mode = "checkout"

The error is:

EPERM: operation not permitted, mkdir 'D:\'

Same thing happens with E:\:

EPERM: operation not permitted, mkdir 'E:\'

I checked the local source a bit and it looks like this may come from openCheckoutWorkspace() in src/workspaces.ts:

const root = assertAllowedPath(path, this.config.allowedRoots);
await mkdir(root, { recursive: true });

const rootStats = await stat(root);

For normal folders this is fine, but for a Windows drive root like D:\ / E:\, calling mkdir(root, { recursive: true }) seems to fail with EPERM.

I think it would be better to check whether the path already exists before calling mkdir. For example:

• if the path already exists and is a directory, just continue
• if it does not exist, then call mkdir
• if drive roots are not intended to be supported, return a clearer error message earlier

Right now the confusing part is that the drive root passes the allowed roots check, but then fails later during workspace initialization.

This matters because on Windows it is useful to allow a workspace at a higher-level path, especially when there are multiple projects under the same drive.

[Waishnav]

Hey I'm can't' test this cause i no longer use windows anymore, (arch btw), go ahead throw your codex or chatgpt+devspace at this issue and come up with the PR attached with small manual QA/testing video about it.

[dodjdnh]

嘿，我无法测试这个了，因为我已不再使用 Windows（顺便说一句，现在用的是 Arch），你尽管把你的 Codex 或 ChatGPT+DevSpace 丢给这个问题，然后提交一个包含小型手动 QA/测试视频的 PR 吧。

Thanks! I opened a PR for this issue:

#43

The PR includes the code fix, an automated regression test, validation with npm run test, npm run typecheck, and npm run build, plus a short Windows manual QA recording.