"b" and duplicate "core" folder appears after composer operations

[kevinquillen]

My system information:

• Operating system type: macOS
• Operating system version: 10.12.6
• BLT version: 8.9.10

Whenever I run a composer require or update command, two strange directories appear in my core folder. I am not sure where they come from, pic attached. I have deleted them before, but they usually re-appear when using Composer. Anyone know why? Composer is latest stable, Drupal 8.4.2.

[greylabel]

This is related to #2251 and https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/1356276?page=1#comment-12277804

[danepowell]

@greylabel thanks so much for finding that d.o issue, I never would have, although I did figure that this was somehow related to #2251 and cweagans/composer-patches#148

I've used both Git 2.14 and 2.15 and never seen this problem. I suspect that like #148, it's tied to your GNU Patch version as well.

@kevinquillen can you try updating GNU Patch to 2.7.5 and see if that fixes this? Instructions for Mac are here: https://docs.acquia.com/article/fixing-failing-composer-patches-updating-gnu-patch

If this holds true, then we should update that KB article to note this as a possible symptom, and consider where else this needs to be documented.

[greylabel]

Fixing this on local environments is not enough. Build artifacts created on Travis will contain these issues if we don't address this more generally.

[danepowell]

@greylabel while I agree that we should fix this as broadly as possible, it might not be possible to do outside of composer-patches.

My understanding is that tools that use Linux-based build environments (including Travis CI and Pipelines) won't be affected by this bug, because Linux provides the latest version of patch out of the box. This bug only manifests in environments using older versions of patch, i.e. Mac OS-based builds.

Can you confirm whether you've actually seen examples of this bug in the wild on Linux environments (i.e. TravisCI)?

[grasmash]

cweagans/composer-patches#148 (comment)

Installing gpatch on OS X 10.12.5 didn't fix this for me, I had to upgrade to High Sierra (10.13.2).

[danepowell]

Can anyone verify if this is fixed with the latest release of composer-patches? (1.6.4, which is required by BLT 8.9.11)

[grasmash]

Installing gpatch on OS X 10.12.5 didn't fix this for me, I had to upgrade to High Sierra (10.13.2).

So, apparently even verifying the system's version of gpatch would be insufficient to resolve this issue in BLT.

My gut reaction is to say that this is not within the scope of BLT, and to refer to the work being done in composer-patches.

At best, I can imagine BLT implementing a very hacky workaround in which we add the docroot/core/b to the default .gitignore but I do not like a solution at all.

We can continue this conversation inside this issue, particularly so that it is easily found by others. However, I'm going to close the issue for now. If anyone has suggestions for how BLT could solve this problem satisfactorily, I would be happy to reopen it.