TypeError: Cannot read property 'text' of undefined

[karptonite]

Bug Report or Feature Request (mark with an x)

- [x] bug report -> please search issues before submitting
- [ ] feature request

Versions.

Angular CLI: 1.5.0-rc.5
Node: 8.8.1
OS: darwin x64
Angular: 5.0.0-rc.7
... animations, common, compiler, compiler-cli, core, forms
... http, language-service, platform-browser
... platform-browser-dynamic, platform-server, router

@angular/cli: 1.5.0-rc.5
@angular-devkit/build-optimizer: 0.0.31
@angular-devkit/core: 0.0.20
@angular-devkit/schematics: 0.0.34
@ngtools/json-schema: 1.1.0
@ngtools/webpack: 1.8.0-rc.5
@schematics/angular: 0.0.48
typescript: 2.4.2
webpack-bundle-analyzer: 2.9.0
webpack: 3.8.1

Repro steps.

in my package, anyway
ng serve --ssl --public-host=//localhost:4200/sockjs-node/ --deploy-url=//localhost:4200/ --serve-path=/
make a trivial change to a template

The log given by the failure.

ERROR in Error: TypeError: Cannot read property 'text' of undefined
    at getErrorSpanForNode (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:7304:40)
    at createDiagnosticForNodeInSourceFile (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:7229:20)
    at Object.createDiagnosticForNode (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:7225:16)
    at error (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:27167:22)
    at resolveExternalModule (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:28226:17)
    at resolveExternalModuleNameWorker (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:28213:20)
    at Object.getExternalModuleFileFromDeclaration (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:47978:32)
    at tryGetModuleNameFromDeclaration (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:15517:50)
    at Object.getExternalModuleNameLiteral (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:15481:20)
    at createRequireCall (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:61248:33)
    at visitExportDeclaration (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:61310:45)
    at sourceElementVisitor (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:61091:28)
    at Object.visitNodes (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:49280:48)
    at transformCommonJSModule (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:60834:40)
    at transformSourceFile (/Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:60808:27)
    at /Users/karp/Documents/git/bgg/geekui2/node_modules/typescript/lib/typescript.js:2492:86

Desired functionality.

Successful compilation

Mention any other details that might be useful.

After the first build, everything works correctly. But a trivial change to a template or a change to whitspace in a ts file gives the error shown.

[karptonite]

A bit more data--I went through my code, and found every instance (not many) where I tried to refer to foo.text, and removed them. No change to the error, so I think the text referred to in the error is not something that I created.

[filipesilva]

I tried making template and whitespace changes but I don't see this. Can you put up a repro please, or show me how I can see this happening in a new project overall?

[karptonite]

I can try. My project is quite large, and because of the nature of the error, there is no indication where in the project the bug occurs.

[karptonite]

@filipesilva OK, I have a repo for you.

As I said, because of the nature of the error, I didn't know how to make a minimal repro. But this reproduces both the error reported in this issue and in #8207, I believe.

Because this is not an open source project, I've added your public key from github so that you alone can access this. If anyone else from the project needs access, let me know, and I'll add their keys as well. If I did this right (not 100% certain that I did), you should be able to clone from here:

git@bitbucket.org:karptonite/cli-test.git

the do

yarn
yarn run start:aot

then make a trivial change in comments-block.component.html, or probably any file, but this is the one I've used to reproduce the issue.

to reproduce #8207, just do yarn start.

I may continue to fiddle with it and push new updates, but not for too long--it is board game day here. :-) Let me know if you have trouble accessing the repo or reproducing the issues.

[avbentem]

Given the references to the other issues I assume you're already thinking this is related to AOT. So just to make it explicit: the problem goes away when using ng serve --no-aot.

(Angular 5.0.0-rc.8, Angular CLI 1.5.0-rc.6.)

[karptonite]

@avbentem thanks, I couldn't confirm that since the #8207 bug meant that I couldn't even compile with no-aot, so couldn't test whether there was a bug on recompile after a change.

[karptonite]

as mentioned here, #8207 (comment), rc.8 seems to have fixed the bug with AOT described above, but an issue with --no-aot persists (and can still be reproduced with the repo above).

[avbentem]

Again just to be clear, despite what's being said in that other issue, for me it's the other way around for rc.8:

• --no-aot works fine, also when making file changes
• without that (so when using the default --aot) all is fine until I make some (dummy) change, even a dummy change in a JSON file.

So, it might not be related to those flags at all...?

(Angular 5.0.0-rc.8, Angular CLI 1.5.0-rc.6 on both OS X and Windows 7. Will test with rc.9 today.)

[filipesilva]

@avbentem can you try @angular/cli@1.5.0-rc.8? The rc.6 version you are using wouldn't have the fix.

@karptonite I cloned your project, updated @angular/cli@1.5.0-rc.8, all other @angular/* dependencies to 5.0.0-rc.9 and typescript@2.4.2.

Running yarn start gave me this error:

ERROR in ./node_modules/angular2-click-outside/clickOutside.directive.ts
Module build failed: Error: D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\angular2-click-outside\clickOutside.directive.ts is not part of the compilation output. Please check the other error messages for detail

s.
    at AngularCompilerPlugin.getCompiledFile (D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\@ngtools\webpack\src\angular_compiler_plugin.js:629:23)
    at plugin.done.then (D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\@ngtools\webpack\src\loader.js:467:39)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:109:7)
 @ ./src/app/shared/shared-universal.module.ts 12:0-86
 @ ./src/app/shared/reactions/reactions.module.ts
 @ ./src/app/file-page/file-page.module.ts
 @ ./src/$$_lazy_route_resource lazy
 @ ./node_modules/@angular/core/esm5/core.js
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi webpack-dev-server/client?https:////localhost:4200/sockjs-node/ ./src/main.ts
ERROR in ./node_modules/angular2-letter-avatar/directives/letter-avatar.directive.ts
Module build failed: Error: D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\angular2-letter-avatar\directives\letter-avatar.directive.ts is not part of the compilation output. Please check the other error message

s for details.
    at AngularCompilerPlugin.getCompiledFile (D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\@ngtools\webpack\src\angular_compiler_plugin.js:629:23)
    at plugin.done.then (D:\sandbox\cli-test\node_modules\@ngtools\webpack\src\loader.js:467:39)
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:109:7)
 @ ./src/app/user/avatar/avatar.module.ts 11:0-98
 @ ./src/app/geekvideo/video-page.module.ts
 @ ./src/$$_lazy_route_resource lazy
 @ ./node_modules/@angular/core/esm5/core.js
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi webpack-dev-server/client?https:////localhost:4200/sockjs-node/ ./src/main.ts

Running yarn start:aot gave me no error, and neither did editing a component or template (like you said was ok now).

I also observed around 9s rebuilds (this is relevant for me in the context of #8259).

I went to look at those files, and it seems like that those two libraries (angular2-click-outside and angular2-letter-avatar) try to ship TS files. This is problematic because then we'd have to reproduce the library environment (dependencies etc) to be able to build it. In general libraries should not ship any typescript files.

To see if I could get around that, I deleted the TS files from those two libraries and tried building again. This resulted in two warnings:

WARNING in ./node_modules/angular2-click-outside/clickOutside.directive.js
System.register is not supported by webpack.
 @ ./src/app/shared/shared-universal.module.ts 12:0-86
 @ ./src/app/shared/shared.module.ts
 @ ./src/app/common-layout.module.ts
 @ ./src/app/app.module.ts
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi webpack-dev-server/client?https:////localhost:4200/sockjs-node/ ./src/main.ts

WARNING in ./node_modules/angular2-letter-avatar/directives/letter-avatar.directive.js
System.register is not supported by webpack.
 @ ./src/app/user/avatar/avatar.module.ts 11:0-98
 @ ./src/app/geekimage/image-page/image-page.module.ts
 @ ./src/$$_lazy_route_resource lazy
 @ ./node_modules/@angular/core/esm5/core.js
 @ ./src/main.ts
 @ multi webpack-dev-server/client?https:////localhost:4200/sockjs-node/ ./src/main.ts

I checked the source javascript files for those libraries and they use SystemJS. I'm sorry to say that those two libraries are not well packaged and not supported by the build system as is... Can you perhaps use something else instead?

BTW great work on https://boardgamegeek.com/, I always go there for board game reviews!

[karptonite]

@filipesilva I'm sure I could find replacement libraries, or fix (or convince the maintainers to fix) the existing packages.

Remember that these are working with AOT builds; does this mean that when they are built with AOT, they are larger and/or slower to build? Or maybe they seem to compile, but there are some subtle problems that will show up at run time?

Also recall that they worked with the no-AOT build system until recently. Has something about the build system changed to make such packages now unusable, in which case this should at least be listed as a breaking change. Considering that I happened to have two such packages in my relatively small app suggests that such packages aren't that uncommon, so this may become an irritation in terms of reported issues if the build system continues to be unable to support packages it used to work with.