wp-env start fails with "error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied"

[duncan-tincello]

I attempted to start an existing project today, after a cap of a few months. I ran wp-env start as usual, and saw messages about updating Docker images (I have seen those before after a gap in my work on the project). This time it failed with

✖ error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied

GitError: error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied

    at Object.action (/home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:1228:25)
    at PluginStore.exec (/home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:1263:29)
    at /home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:1627:43
    at new Promise (<anonymous>)
    at GitExecutorChain.handleTaskData (/home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:1625:16)
    at GitExecutorChain.<anonymous> (/home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:1609:44)
    at Generator.next (<anonymous>)
    at fulfilled (/home/blob/theme/node_modules/simple-git/dist/cjs/index.js:55:24)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5) {
  task: {
    commands: [ 'fetch', '--tags', 'origin', '6.2' ],
    format: 'utf-8',
    parser: [Function: parseFetchResult]
  }
}

I tried setting up a new plugin project and using wp-env from scratch and that works OK, but I cannot start this project.
I am developing on Mint Linux. The permissions for the project root folder are drwxr-xr-x, and .git/ has the same permissions. .git/FETCH_HEAD has permissions -rw-r--r--.
Any ideas?

[noahtallen]

You could always try npx wp-env --destroy to start from scratch for this specific project. (Though you'd loose any database content). I'm not sure what the issue is, but it seems like the local permissions may have changed since the last time you ran it?

[duncan-tincello]

Hi Noah, yes, I could do that. The thing is, this is the second time this has happened in the last two years, and in both cases I had changed nothing locally, to the best of my knowledge, I had merely left the project alone for a few months then returned to find it will not start because of this fault. I might have to abandon wp-env and set up my own Docker containers - I did that before I found wp-env - because they are more reliable.

[noahtallen]

We're overhauling the permissions here to hopefully improve things: #49962 I'm not sure that will fix this specific issue though

[duncan-tincello]

Thanks Noah