[bug] vuepress does not support custom routes

[Zaba505]

Bug report

Description

Since Vuepress exposes the Router to clients in clientAppEnhance files, it should be safe to assume that all APIs pertaining to it should be usable, such as, adding routes on-the-fly with Router.addRoute. Vuepress does make this do-able; however, at runtime when trying to navigate to the newly added routes an unexpected error is thrown from Vuepress' custom router resolve guard due to Vuepress not registering the new routes' component as a pagesComponent.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a fresh vuepress site plugin/theme.
2. Add a clientAppEnhance.js with following body:

const Custom = { template: `<div>I'm a custom component for a custom route!</div>` }

export default defineClientAppEnhance(({
  app,
  router,
  siteData
}) => {
  router.addRoute({
    path: '/custom',
    component: Custom
  })
});

3. Then in Layout.vue, provide a RouterLink:

<RouterLink to="/custom">Custom</RouterLink>

• reproduction
• router proof-of-concept

The router reproduction was to confirm that vue-router@v4 does properly support aliases, which is my exact use case. The git repo shows that this issue is triggered regardless if it's an alias or separate path.

Expected behavior

Vuepress shouldn't impede custom navigation.

Screenshots

Environment info

• Browser: Firefox: 87.0
• Output of vuepress info:

System:
    OS: Linux 5.11 Fedora 33 (Workstation Edition) 33 (Workstation Edition)
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
    Memory: 21.11 GB / 31.22 GB
    Shell: 5.0.17 - /bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 14.15.1 - /tmp/yarn--1617696568327-0.479712292609096/node
    Yarn: 1.22.10 - /tmp/yarn--1617696568327-0.479712292609096/yarn
    npm: 7.8.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.1/bin/npm
  Utilities:
    Git: 2.30.2 - /usr/bin/git
  Browsers:
    Chrome: Not Found
    Firefox: 87.0
  npmPackages:
    @vuepress/bundler-vite: Not Found
    @vuepress/bundler-webpack:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/cli:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/client:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/core:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/markdown:  2.0.0-beta.5 
    @vuepress/plugin-active-header-links:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-back-to-top:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-container:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-debug: Not Found
    @vuepress/plugin-docsearch: Not Found
    @vuepress/plugin-git:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-google-analytics: Not Found
    @vuepress/plugin-medium-zoom:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-nprogress:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-palette:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/plugin-pwa: Not Found
    @vuepress/plugin-pwa-popup: Not Found
    @vuepress/plugin-theme-data:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/shared:  2.0.0-beta.4 
    @vuepress/theme-default:  2.0.0-beta.6 
    @vuepress/theme-vue: Not Found
    @vuepress/utils:  2.0.0-beta.5 
    vue:  3.0.11 
    vue-loader:  16.2.0 
    vue-router:  4.0.5 
    vuepress: ^2.0.0-beta.6 => 2.0.0-beta.6 
    vuepress-vite: Not Found

[Zaba505]

Not entirely sure if this should be considered a bug or feature or both so I went with bug since it's impeding my current work on a custom theme.

I'd also be more than happy to help on a fix for this if it's deemed worth fixing/adding support to Vuepress for custom routes.

[meteorlxy]

See #69

Of course we can avoid this error, but if you add routes dynamically, the page is not possible to be pre-rendered during build. So it is not a recommended usage.

We'll add some examples in documentation for theme development

[meteorlxy]

After some investigation, I find this is kind of a "bug" and can be fixed 🤔

But adding dynamic routes is still not recommended, unless you know what's the drawback.

[Zaba505]

@meteorlxy Thanks for looking into this! That other issue is also really useful.

We'll add some examples in documentation for theme development

But adding dynamic routes is still not recommended, unless you know what's the drawback.

I also think adding some examples about dynamic pages to the documentation would be a great idea to help guide others away from dynamic routes or at least advice them that there is most likely a better solution for what they may be trying to do.