ng build --prod unable to process symbolic links

[MortimerCat]

OS?

Linux Ubuntu

Versions.

@angular/cli: 1.0.0-rc.0
node: 7.4.0
os: linux x64

I am working on two angular-cli projects (frontend and backend). As they share many components, services etc, I created a folder "actual-common" and put a symbolic link "common" under the src folder of each project. This worked well until I performed an ng build using the --prod option, at which point every shared item gives the following message.

ERROR in ../actual-common/modules/auth0/logout/logout.component.ts
Module build failed: TypeError: Cannot read property 'text' of undefined
    at Object.getTokenPosOfNode (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:6768:71)
    at IdentifierObject.TokenOrIdentifierObject.getStart (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:80500:23)
    at IdentifierObject.TokenOrIdentifierObject.getText (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:80521:77)
    at refactor.findAstNodes.filter (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/loader.js:139:44)
    at Array.filter (native)
    at refactor.findAstNodes.forEach.node (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/loader.js:138:14)
    at Array.forEach (native)
    at _removeDecorators (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/loader.js:129:10)
    at Promise.resolve.then (/home/Angular/frontend/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/loader.js:292:33)
 @ ./src/$$_gendir/app/app.module.ngfactory.ts 81:0-79
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi ./src/main.ts

I noted that the error refers to my absolute path "actual-common", so I presume it is a webpack issue similar to webpack/webpack#1643 I also note that a custom webpack configuration is not available using Angular-Cli, so the workaround described on the issue is not available to me.

My workaround was to clone the project and replace the "common" symlink with the actual files.

(Is there a better way to share code between local projects?)

[kipy-be]

+1
Same on Windows 10
But the symlinks are correctly resolved with "ng serve"

[MortimerCat]

As @kipy-be says, symbolic links work with "ng serve", plus "ng lint" and even "ng build" just as long as you do not use the --prod flag. Both "ng build --prod" and "ng serve --prod" cause the error.

[mitosandov]

+1

[stephen-moyer]

Getting this too, on Windows though.

It looks like when I run ng build --prod inside a location thats a symlink, all of the nodes coming back from this code have an undefined parent.

If I run the command inside the actual directory, the parents are correctly set.

EDIT:
I can actually fix the issue if I pass the sourceFile argument into getStart() in the typescript compiler here, but I don't think that's actually a fix. Not sure why the parents are undefined inside the symlink.

After more debugging, program.getSourceFile(fileName) is coming back undefined when inside the symlink directory.

So the typescript compiler's currentDirectory is the symlink location, but the paths getting passed into getSourceFile are resolved paths(so the actual location on disk), which I guess is throwing the typescript compiler out of whack, so it's just returning undefined.

[kipy-be]

I've noticed that AOT is now enabled by default with the --prod flag.
I tried disabling it to see what happens, and... It seems to work.

So, both
ng build --prod --aot false
ng serve --prod --aot false

are working with symlink resolution.

The issue is aot related.

[MortimerCat]

I concur with @kipy-be, I am able to compile with symbolic links when I set --aot false. To be honest, I have no idea what I lose by turning AOT off. Is it a practical workaround to the symbolic link problem, or should I stick to my cloning with the actual files?

[stephen-moyer]

@MortimerCat You would want to use AOT in a production environment. It compiles your html/css files into the internal angular components. If you skip this step, it ends up happening in the browser which will increase page load time.

[filipesilva]

Sounds like a bug. Thanks for reporting it.

[sangecz]

Same issue on latest tooling.
How does it looks like, when can we expect AOT to be working again? Thx.