Django has a belief that there is a SuspiciousFileOperation error when this just is not the case. My fully reproducible setup is below. It continues to return this error despite the fact that:

1. I have installed and set up Whitenoise correctly, as well as in the Middleware and InstalledApps, in the settings.py filw, as well as the following:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

MIDDLEWARE = [

    "whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware",

]

STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / "staticfiles"
STATIC_URL = 'static'
STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    BASE_DIR / "static"
]

2. Despite the fact that I have correctly set up the static config in my root urls.py folder, as follows:

from django.conf import settings
from django.conf.urls.static import static
from django.views.static import serve

urlpatterns = [
    
  ......

]

# Only for development. Do not use this in production.
if settings.DEBUG:
    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
    urlpatterns += static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT)

My directory is as follows:

<PROJECTNAME>
     <ROOTFOLDER>
         settings.py
         urls.py
     <APP NAME>
         static
            file.css
     static
         libraries
            css
              image-video-hero.css
     staticfiles
         libraries
            css
              image-video-hero.css
       

Therefore, there is no reason as to why Django should have an issue with this, however, when I run the command of python manage.py collectstatic command, I still get the trace back of:

  File "<FILEPATH><PROJECTNAME>.venvLibsite-packagesdjangoutils_os.py", line 31, in safe_join
    raise SuspiciousFileOperation(
django.core.exceptions.SuspiciousFileOperation: The joined path (<FILEPATH>staticlibrariescssimage-video-hero.css) is located outside of the base path component (<FILEPATH><PROJECTNAME>staticfiles)

Its makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

In the STATiC_ROOT variable, I have tried removing the forward slash, I have tried removing the trailing slash, I have tried removing both slashes at the same time. I have also tried this with the STATIC_URL and STATICFILES_DIRS settings.

I have tried rearranging the files in my static folder, I have tried reading the Django documentation, I have tried the W3school tutorial, I have tried the 9,545,321,4546,999,3232,545,464 extremely inaccurate tutorials on YouTube, I have tried selling my sanity. I expected it to be able to see that the offending file is actually in the base path.