fix: guard slice() against non-datetime timestamps and broken symlinks

[JarbasAl]

🤖 Auto-generated by Claude Sonnet 5 via Claude Code — NOT human-reviewed. Verify before acting.

This closes #261 and #227, which turned out to be two unrelated bugs sharing the same crash site (ovos-logs slice), not one root cause.

#261 — OVOSLogParser.parse() fell back to timestamp="" (a string) for a log line that doesn't match LOG_PATTERN (e.g. one missing a field) before any timestamped line has been seen. slice() then compared that string against datetime bounds with start <= log.timestamp < end and raised TypeError: '<=' not supported between instances of 'datetime.datetime' and 'str'. parse() now falls back to None, matching LogLine's declared type, and slice() skips entries whose timestamp is None.

#227 — get_log_path() used os.path.exists() to check whether a service's log file is present, which returns False for a broken symlink even though get_available_logs() (which uses os.listdir()) lists it as available. That mismatch let a service that "exists" from the CLI's point of view get None back for its log directory, which then blew up os.path.join(None, ...) with TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType. This matches the collaborator's comment on #227 pointing at symlinked logs under ~/.local/state/mycroft. Switched to os.path.lexists() so both functions agree on what counts as present.

Both were reproduced against current dev (traceback matches each issue), with regression tests that fail before each fix and pass after. Full existing test suite is unaffected: 1002 passed, 9 pre-existing failures unrelated to this code (bus-client SessionManager API drift and a langcodes macrolanguage assertion), 1 skipped — same counts before and after this change.

[coderabbitai]

Important

Draft PR not reviewed

Draft PRs are not automatically reviewed by default.

• Trigger a manual review

To automatically review draft PRs, update your CodeRabbit configuration:

reviews:
  auto_review:
    drafts: true

---

Thanks for using CodeRabbit! It's free for OSS, and your support helps us grow. If you like it, consider giving us a shout-out.

❤️ Share

• X
• Mastodon
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[github-actions]

The automated pipeline has reached its destination. 🏁

I've aggregated the results of the automated checks for this PR below.

🏷️ Release Preview

The release candidate is looking strong. 💪

Current: 0.14.2a1 → Next: 0.14.3a1

Signal	Value
Label	(none)
PR title	fix: guard slice() against non-datetime timestamps and broken symlinks
Bump	build

✅ PR title follows conventional commit format.

---

🚀 Release Channel Compatibility

Predicted next version: 0.14.3a1

Channel	Status	Note	Current Constraint
Stable	❌	Too new (must be <0.9.0)	ovos-utils>=0.8.1,<0.9.0
Testing	❌	Too new (must be <0.8.5)	ovos-utils>=0.8.4,<0.8.5
Alpha	✅	Compatible	ovos-utils>=0.14.2a1

⚖️ License Check

Keeping the lawyers happy, one file at a time. 👔

✅ No license violations found.

Policy: Apache 2.0 (universal donor). StrongCopyleft / NetworkCopyleft / WeakCopyleft / Other / Error categories fail. MPL allowed.

🔒 Security (pip-audit)

Ensuring our digital fortress remains impenetrable. 🏰

✅ No known vulnerabilities found (47 packages scanned).

📋 Repo Health

Ensuring the repo is ready for a marathon (aka long-term support). 🏁

✅ All required files present.

Latest Version: 0.14.2a1

✅ ovos_utils/version.py — Version file
✅ README.md — README
✅ LICENSE — License file
✅ pyproject.toml — pyproject.toml
⚠️ setup.py — setup.py
✅ CHANGELOG.md — Changelog
✅ ovos_utils/version.py has valid version block markers

🔍 Lint

I've finished my task! Here's the data you need. 📊

❌ ruff: issues found — see job log

📊 Coverage

I've been crunching the numbers! Here's how the test coverage changed. 📈

✅ 85.5% total coverage

Files below 80% coverage (5 files)

File	Coverage	Missing lines
ovos_utils/log_parser.py	48.4%	225
ovos_utils/__init__.py	63.6%	16
ovos_utils/file_utils.py	74.4%	56
ovos_utils/thread_utils.py	76.9%	12
ovos_utils/geolocation.py	78.4%	22

Full report: download the coverage-report artifact.

🔨 Build Tests

Compiling thoughts and code into something real. 🧠

✅ All versions pass

Python	Build	Install	Tests
3.10	✅	✅	✅
3.11	✅	✅	✅
3.12	✅	✅	✅
3.13	✅	✅	✅
3.14	✅	✅	✅

---

Your 24/7 automated code reviewer 🌙