Error when facet strip.text = element_blank()

[nstjhp]

The issue arose when I wanted to make arrange plots where I had removed the facet strip completely. I isolated the problem down to the removal of the strip.text.
As an example

facet_with_labels <- function(df) {
    ggplot(df, aes(hp, mpg)) +
    facet_wrap(gear~., ncol=1) + geom_point() }
facet_no_strip_bg <- function(df) {
    ggplot(df, aes(hp, mpg)) +
    facet_wrap(gear~., ncol=1) + geom_point() + theme(strip.background = element_blank())}
facet_no_striptext <- function(df) {
    ggplot(df, aes(hp, mpg)) +
    facet_wrap(gear~., ncol=1) + geom_point() + theme(strip.text = element_blank())}

p_with = facet_with_labels(mtcars)
p_no_bg = facet_no_strip_bg(mtcars)
p_no_striptext = facet_no_striptext(mtcars)

All individual plots are OK:

p_with
p_no_bg
p_no_striptext

Combined plot, one with blank facet strip background is OK

p_with + p_no_bg

Combined plot, one with blank facet strip text fails

p_with + p_no_striptext
Error in unit(height, default.units) : 
  'x' and 'units' must have length > 0

Combined plot, both without strips (my use case)

p_no_striptext + p_no_striptext
Error in unit(height, default.units) : 
  'x' and 'units' must have length > 0

What I wanted:

cowplot::plot_grid(p_no_striptext, p_no_striptext)

sessionInfo()
R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 19.10

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.8.0
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.8.0

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] patchwork_1.0.1 ggplot2_3.3.1  

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] digest_0.6.25    withr_2.2.0      dplyr_1.0.0      crayon_1.3.4    
 [5] grid_3.6.1       R6_2.4.1         lifecycle_0.2.0  gtable_0.3.0    
 [9] magrittr_1.5     scales_1.1.1     pillar_1.4.4     rlang_0.4.6     
[13] farver_2.0.3     generics_0.0.2   vctrs_0.3.1      ellipsis_0.3.1  
[17] labeling_0.3     glue_1.4.1       purrr_0.3.4      munsell_0.5.0   
[21] compiler_3.6.1   pkgconfig_2.0.3  colorspace_1.4-1 tidyselect_1.1.0
[25] tibble_3.0.1 

[iagomosqueira]

I noticed this problem after moving to R 4.0.2

This test works in R 3.6.3 but not in R 4.0.2

library(patchwork)
data(cars)

(ggplot(cars, aes(x=speed, y=dist)) + geom_line()) +
(ggplot(cbind(cars, facet=1), aes(x=speed, y=dist)) + geom_point() + facet_wrap(~facet) +
  theme(strip.text = element_blank()))

If I compare the object returned by the second ggplot call, they do not appear to be different (all.equal is TRUE).