Allow routes to be symlinks

[pddg]

What version of Remix are you using?

1.7.5

Steps to Reproduce

Initialize the project.

npx @remix-run/dev@1.7.5 create ./remix-symlink
# ? What type of app do you want to create? Just the basics
# ? Where do you want to deploy? Choose Remix App Server if you're unsure; it's easy to change deployment targets.
# Cloudflare Workers
# ? TypeScript or JavaScript? TypeScript
# ? Do you want me to run `npm install`? Yes

cd ./remix-symlink

Make routes/index.tsx symlink.

mv app/routes app/routes_orig
mkdir app/routes
ln -s ${PWD}/app/routes_orig/index.tsx ${PWD}/app/routes/index.tsx

Show detected routes

npx remix routes --json

Expected Behavior

The routes that is symlink is detected

❯ npx remix routes --json
[
  {
    "id": "root",
    "path": "",
    "file": "root.tsx",
    "children": [
      {
        "id": "routes/index",
        "index": true,
        "file": "routes/index.tsx"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Actual Behavior

routes/index.tsx is not detected as routes even though it exists.

❯ npx remix routes --json
[
  {
    "id": "root",
    "path": "",
    "file": "root.tsx"
  }
]

[dmarkow]

This is due to https://github.com/remix-run/remix/blob/main/packages/remix-dev/config/routesConvention.ts#L214 using fs.lstatSync:

function visitFiles(
  dir: string,
  visitor: (file: string) => void,
  baseDir = dir
): void {
  for (let filename of fs.readdirSync(dir)) {
    let file = path.resolve(dir, filename);
    let stat = fs.lstatSync(file);

    if (stat.isDirectory()) {
      visitFiles(file, visitor, baseDir);
    } else if (stat.isFile()) {
      visitor(path.relative(baseDir, file));
    }
  }
}

lstatSync stats the link itself, not the file/dir it references, so both the isDirectory() and isFile() calls return false. Switching to statSync would follow the link.

This is an easy enough PR (I did a separate PR on routesConvention.ts yesterday so it's fresh in my mind), I just don't know if there's a reasoning behind not wanting to follow symlinks?

[kiliman]

Nice. One of my first attempts to sharing route files was to use symlinks. Thanks for figuring out why Remix wasn't following links.

[machour]

Converting this to a Proposal discussion, as per our Development Process.

[sarat1669]

Any update on this? Or is there an alternative way to share routes?

[jvliwanag]

This also breaks bazel based builds which symlinks source files.