publish --build --dist-dir fails when the directory ends with a separator #11199

Description

poetry publish --build --dist-dir <dir> does not write artifacts to <dir> when <dir> ends with a native directory separator, e.g. --dist-dir 'dist\' or --dist-dir "C:\path with space\" on Windows.

This is a regression from #11171. PublishCommand.handle() creates the nested build command's argument string like this:

escaped_dist_dir = dist_dir.replace('"', '\\"')
exit_code = self.call("build", args=f'--output "{escaped_dist_dir}"')

When dist_dir ends with a backslash, the generated string ends in \". Cleo's tokenizer treats \" as an escaped quote, so the closing quote is consumed and the build target becomes dist" (with a literal quote character).

On Windows the build fails immediately:

Building sdist
  - Building sdist
  [WinError 123] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect: '...\dist"'

The tokenizer behavior is platform-independent; the reproduction and fix are verified on Windows, where a trailing native separator is a backslash.

Expected: artifacts are written to exactly the directory passed to --dist-dir for a normal directory path, including a path with a trailing separator. (Filesystem-root paths such as C:\ are a separate pre-existing tokenization edge and are not covered here.) The description of #11171 said the path was normalized with str(Path(dist_dir)), but commit f1a29b2 removed that normalization from the merged code.

Reproduced on main at 6ecadf5 (Poetry 2.5.1), on Windows 11:

$ python -m poetry publish --build --dry-run --dist-dir 'dist\'
Building repro-project (0.1.0)
Building sdist
  - Building sdist
[WinError 123] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect: '...\dist"'

The control --dist-dir "my dist" (space, no trailing separator) succeeds and writes into my dist.

Workarounds

Drop the trailing separator: use --dist-dir dist instead of --dist-dir 'dist\'.

Poetry Installation Method

other (source checkout)

Operating System

Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200 (reproduction and fix verified on Windows; the tokenizer itself is platform-independent).

Poetry Version

Poetry (version 2.5.1), main at 6ecadf5 (unreleased main after #11171; the 2.5.1 release predates #11171 and is unaffected).

Poetry Configuration

Paths redacted; the remaining values are the defaults from poetry config --list.

cache-dir = "<cache-dir>"
data-dir = "<data-dir>"
installer.parallel = true
installer.re-resolve = false
keyring.enabled = true
python.installation-dir = "{data-dir}/python"
requests.max-retries = 0
solver.lazy-wheel = true
solver.min-release-age = 0
system-git-client = false
virtualenvs.create = true
virtualenvs.in-project = null
virtualenvs.options.always-copy = false
virtualenvs.options.no-pip = false
virtualenvs.options.system-site-packages = false
virtualenvs.path = "{cache-dir}/virtualenvs"
virtualenvs.prompt = "{project_name}-py{python_version}"
virtualenvs.use-poetry-python = false

Python Sysconfig

Platform: win-amd64; Python version: 3.12; scheme: venv. Full paths omitted.

Example pyproject.toml

[tool.poetry]
name = "repro-project"
version = "0.1.0"
description = ""
authors = ["Test <[email protected]>"]
packages = [{ include = "mypkg" }]

[build-system]
requires = ["poetry-core"]
build-backend = "poetry.core.masonry.api"

Poetry Runtime Logs

# python -m poetry -vvv publish --build --dry-run --dist-dir 'dist\'
...
  1  .../poetry/core/masonry/builders/sdist.py:68 in build
       67│         if not target_dir.exists():
    →  68│             target_dir.mkdir(parents=True)

  OSError

  [WinError 123] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect: '...\dist"'

  at .../pathlib.py:1311 in mkdir