[BUG] OpenClaw: apc sync crashes with [Errno 17] File exists when skill exists as a symlink #33

Tool Affected

openclaw

What Happened

Running apc sync --all --yes when ~/.openclaw/skills/test-skill exists as a symlink (from a previous apc install) crashes with:

✗ Failed to apply to openclaw: [Errno 17] File exists: '/Users/frank/.openclaw/skills/test-skill'

The entire openclaw sync fails — no skills written, no memory synced.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run apc install <some-repo> --skill test-skill --target openclaw
   → Creates ~/.openclaw/skills/test-skill as a symlink to ~/.apc/skills/test-skill
2. Run apc sync --all --yes
   → Crashes with [Errno 17] File exists

Root Cause

In src/appliers/openclaw.py, apply_skills() does:

skill_dir = _openclaw_skills_dir() / name
skill_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)  # <-- fails if path is a symlink

Path.mkdir(exist_ok=True) raises FileExistsError (errno 17) when the path is an existing symlink pointing to a directory — it does not treat symlinks as directories. The symlink was created by link_skills() in base.py, and apply_skills() has no code to handle this case.

What Was Expected

• apply_skills() should detect if the target path is a symlink and either:
  • Skip it (if the linked content is current), or
  • Remove the symlink and write the skill directory directly

Suggested Fix

skill_dir = _openclaw_skills_dir() / name
if skill_dir.is_symlink():
    skill_dir.unlink()  # remove symlink before mkdir
skill_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

Additional Context

After this crash, apc status still shows ● synced for openclaw — the manifest was not updated to reflect the failure.