Permission Denied Error for root owned folder

Bug

I was adding tests as a user to a project that contains a symlinked subfolder owned by root (so I don't have access to it as my normal user). In the collections process pytest fails with a PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied (stack trace below). sudo pytest works but I don't want to have to run my tests as root.

Attempted fixes

I have tried using a pytest.ini file that uses norecursedirs = privileged_dir or addopts --ignore=privileged_dir but it appears the issue occurs during collection when pytest tries to check if the directory is a file and that raises a PermissionError.

Possible Patch

I monkey-patched main.py to do the following and calling pytest is now working.

# main.py (line ~685)
for direntry in visit(str(argpath), self._recurse):
    try:
        if not direntry.is_file():
            continue
     except PermissionError:
         warnings.warn(f"PyTest could not check folder {direntry} due to PermissionError")
         continue

Stack Trace

../anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/_pytest/runner.py:310: in from_call
    result = func()  # type: Optional[TResult]
../anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/_pytest/runner.py:340: in <lambda>
    call = CallInfo.from_call(lambda: list(collector.collect()), "collect")
../anaconda3/lib/python3.8/site-packages/_pytest/main.py:685: in collect
    if not direntry.is_file():
E   PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/project/privileged_dir'

Start in _pytest/main.py around the collect method at line 685, where direntry.is_file() raises PermissionError for an inaccessible symlinked folder. Reproduce collection with a root-owned folder and compare the behavior with the proposed guard. Done means pytest can collect accessible tests without requiring root and handles the inaccessible entry without aborting collection.