Avoid adding empty directories in 'wp-content' and 'wordpress' modes

[danielbachhuber]

If you run wp-now start in 'wp-content' mode, you will end up with some empty directories: wp-content/database, wp-content/plugins/sqlite-database-integration, and wp-content/db.php.

From WordPress/wordpress-playground#318:

Note: mount() still adds an empty directory (https://emscripten.org/docs/api_reference/Filesystem-API.html#FS.mount) but at least such empty directory is not caught by git status in the developer's project.

This seems like an upstream bug right now; not sure how we'll be able to resolve.

[adamziel]

Sqlite plugin and db.php could perhaps be somehow handled by VFS, but I’d like the database file to stick around. It’s your data, you should have access to it.

[wojtekn]

Sqlite plugin and db.php could perhaps be somehow handled by VFS, but I’d like the database file to stick around. It’s your data, you should have access to it.

I think that keeping it in the hidden directory by default will be a preferable default approach as that way, we will avoid making changes to local project files. As a user, when I clone the repository and start the local environment there, I would expect to have no (or minimal) changes done to my project, so git status still shows clean. I implemented it in WordPress/wordpress-playground#313

We could add the behavior you proposed as an option in the feature, so the user could decide to keep the SQLite database file with the project and track it in VCS, for example.

This ticket's goal is to explore the possibility of removing the side effect of FS.mount, which currently adds an empty directory for each mounted resource.

[fmfernandes]

I'm using Laravel Valet to develop locally and trying out wp-now as well.

On a standard installation of WordPress in a parked domain in Valet if I later run wp-now start in wp-content, the Valet site stops working, throwing a fatal:

Warning: require_once(/test/wp-content/db.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /test/wp-includes/load.php on line 570

Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/test/wp-content/db.php' (include_path='.:/opt/homebrew/Cellar/php@7.4/7.4.33_2/share/php@7.4/pear') in /test/wp-includes/load.php on line 570

So, I have to manually delete the database and db.php directories created by wp-now for the Valet site to work again. While I'm just testing both tools, it would be good if there's a way to have both working side-by-side.

[danielbachhuber]

One idea is to have wp-now delete db.php/ and database/ when the server stops. However, this doesn't let Valet and wp-now run completely side by side...

[adamziel]

I wouldn't rely too much on any exit hooks. There's a lot of ways a process may die and only one happy path. I'd rather find a way to not create these empty directories in the first place. How are they created again? Is it an Emscripten thing or BasePHP thing from this repo?

We have an mkdir in mount() – perhaps that is the source of the problem?

https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/blob/f5e1654c0e3b2ab1a420aaf1643d26ad48c12937/packages/php-wasm/node/src/lib/node-php.ts#L129-L132

If so, let's add an option like { createDirectory: false }.