`remove_` directory action not shown in `chezmoi status`

[rightaditya]

Describe the bug

If a directory that has the remove_ source attribute would be removed by chezmoi apply, chezmoi status should indicate as much, but it doesn't. This seems to affect remove_ directories only, not remove_ files.

To reproduce

$ mkdir test
$ chezmoi add test
$ chezmoi chattr +remove test
$ chezmoi status
$ chezmoi apply
$ stat test
stat: cannot statx 'test': No such file or directory

Expected behavior

$ mkdir test
$ chezmoi add test
$ chezmoi chattr +remove test
$ chezmoi status
 D test
$ chezmoi apply
$ stat test
stat: cannot statx 'test': No such file or directory

This would be consistent with the different (and, I believe, correct) current behaviour for files:

$ touch test
$ chezmoi add test
$ chezmoi chattr +remove test
$ chezmoi status
 D test
$ chezmoi apply
$ stat test
stat: cannot statx 'test': No such file or directory

Output of command with the --verbose flag

$ mkdir test
$ chezmoi add -v test
diff --git a/test b/test
new file mode 40750
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test
diff --git a/test/.keep b/test/.keep
new file mode 100640
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/.keep
$ chezmoi chattr -v +remove test
diff --git a/test b/remove_test
rename from test
rename to remove_test
$ chezmoi status -v
$ chezmoi apply -v
diff --git a/.local/state/dconf.sh b/.local/state/dconf.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.local/state/dconf.sh
diff --git a/test b/test
deleted file mode 40750
index e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
--- a/test
+++ /dev/null
$ stat test
stat: cannot statx 'test': No such file or directory

Output of chezmoi doctor

$ chezmoi doctor
RESULT    CHECK                       MESSAGE
warning   version                     v2.65.1, built at 2025-09-09T23:21:13Z
ok        latest-version              v2.65.1
ok        os-arch                     linux/amd64 (CachyOS Linux)
ok        uname                       Linux capsaicin 6.16.6-3-cachyos #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:00:19 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ok        go-version                  go1.25.1 X:nodwarf5 (gc)
ok        executable                  /usr/bin/chezmoi
ok        config-file                 found ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml, last modified 2025-04-23T15:48:26-04:00
warning   source-dir                  ~/.local/share/chezmoi is a git working tree (dirty)
ok        suspicious-entries          no suspicious entries
warning   working-tree                ~/.local/share/chezmoi is a git working tree (dirty)
ok        dest-dir                    ~ is a directory
error     hardlink                    failed creating hardlink from ~/.local/share/chezmoi to /run/user/1000: link ~/.local/share/chezmoi/.chezmoi-doctor-hardlink-test /run/user/1000/chezmoi-doctor792007854/.chezmoi-doctor-hardlink-test: invalid cross-device link
warning   umask                       027
ok        cd-command                  found /bin/fish
ok        cd-args                     /bin/fish
info      diff-command                not set
ok        edit-command                found /usr/bin/nvim
ok        edit-args                   /usr/bin/nvim
ok        git-command                 found /usr/bin/git, version 2.51.0
ok        merge-command               found /usr/bin/meld
ok        shell-command               found /bin/fish
ok        shell-args                  /bin/fish
ok        age-command                 found /usr/bin/age, version 1.2.1
ok        gpg-command                 found /usr/bin/gpg, version 2.4.8
info      pinentry-command            not set
ok        1password-command           found /usr/bin/op, version 2.31.1
info      bitwarden-command           bw not found in $PATH
info      bitwarden-secrets-command   bws not found in $PATH
info      dashlane-command            dcli not found in $PATH
info      doppler-command             doppler not found in $PATH
info      gopass-command              gopass not found in $PATH
info      keepassxc-command           keepassxc-cli not found in $PATH
info      keepassxc-db                not set
info      keeper-command              keeper not found in $PATH
info      lastpass-command            lpass not found in $PATH
info      pass-command                pass not found in $PATH
info      passhole-command            ph not found in $PATH
info      rbw-command                 rbw not found in $PATH
info      vault-command               vault not found in $PATH
info      secret-command              not set

[twpayne]

Firstly, thank you for reporting this and thank you for including clear steps to reproduce the problem.

I spent some time investigating and trying to fix this. My current experiments are in the fix-4652 branch.

This is definitely a bug in chezmoi. The tricky thing about fixing it is that chezmoi status visits entries in alphabetical order (i.e. chezmoi visits directories before their children), but chezmoi only knows whether a remove_ directory should be removed after it has visited that directory's children (i.e. chezmoi only knows that it should remove a directory after it has established that that directory should be empty). So, reporting the correct status for a remove_ directory currently requires both a forward and a reverse traversal.

Currently chezmoi has several special cases for remove_ directories, and adding more special cases will only make things even more complicated. I hope to fix this in version 3 of chezmoi (which will refactor chezmoi's internal state representation), but I don't know yet when I'll have time to work on v3.