If you look at the docs for shutil (https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html), you will notice all over it says things like "path names given as strings". The question is whether that statement is true in the face of path-like objects? If it is true then the corresponding function in shutil should be updated to accept path-like objects. If it's false then the docs for the function should be updated.

This is a meta-issue to track working on the overall module (IOW separate PRs to fix things piecemeal is fine). Looks like the following functions need checking/updating:

- copyfile
- copymode
- copystat
- copy
- copy2
- copytree
- rmtree
- move
- disk_usage
- chown
- make_archive


[ unpack_archive is covered by https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/1367]

There is another place where the use of Path objects is not yet working: when move() is given a directory as argument. A patch is in review in issue32689.

One thing to note is the copy_function parameter: if a path-like object is given as input should the copy_function receive the same object instead of a path string?


>>> copytree(path_like_src, path_like_dst, copy_function=foo)


Because of issue33695 in case of copytree(..., copy_function=...) we currently force to always pass path strings if copy_function is specified:
https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/ed1deb0719f0ac1b08a374e30ad26a701d4d51a2/Lib/shutil.py#L450