`make livehtml` removed the current directory

[mauritsvanrees]

Links of affected pages in Plone Documentation, if any.

No response

Description

I created a documentation PR last week, and now wanted to continue on it:

$ make livehtml 
python3 -m venv . || virtualenv --clear --python=python3 .
Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/maurits/community/plone-coredev/6.0/documentation/docs/bin/python3'
created virtual environment CPython3.11.8.final.0-64 in 4533ms
  creator CPython3Posix(dest=/Users/maurits/community/plone-coredev/6.0/documentation/docs, clear=True, no_vcs_ignore=False, global=False)
  seeder FromAppData(download=False, pip=bundle, wheel=bundle, setuptools=bundle, via=copy, app_data_dir=/Users/maurits/Library/Application Support/virtualenv)
    added seed packages: pip==21.2.3, setuptools==57.4.0, wheel==0.37.0
  activators PythonActivator,CShellActivator,FishActivator,PowerShellActivator,BashActivator
bin/pip install -r requirements-initial.txt
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory
bash: line 1: bin/pip: No such file or directory
make: *** [bin/python] Error 127

So for whatever reason (no idea), python3 -m venv . failed, so the Makefile fell back to calling virtualenv --clear. Since a few years, --clear actually removes the target directory. So my checkout of the documentation repo was gone.

No worries: no work was lost. Still, I would like to avoid this. :-D

Two possible solutions, for this line in the Makefile:

1. Remove the --clear option.
2. Never call virtualenv, only use python3 -m venv .. I suppose the virtualenv fallback was only there to support Python versions that did not yet have the venv module. This should not be an issue anymore.

I would be happy to make a PR if wanted, but it would be good to know the preference first.

[stevepiercy]

Option 2 sounds better to me, now that we're on Python 3 versions that come with venv. Thank you!