this.remote async execution order

[julkue]

A part of a yeoman generator:

loadingFiles: function(){
    var done = this.async();
    this.remote('xyz', 'xyz', 'master', function(err, remote){
        remote.directory('src', 'src');
        done();
    }, true);
},
something: function(){
    this.log("FINISHING");
},
finishing: function(){
    this.installDependencies();
}

will print the following:

Fetching...
FINISHING
I'm all done. Running npm...
create "...."
....

Fetching... and create "..." is related to this.remote.
So what I expect is:

Fetching
create "..."
FINISHING
I'm all done. Running npm...

What is going on here?

[SBoudrias]

What version are you on?

[julkue]

NodeJS: 4.2.2
Yo: 1.6.0

[SBoudrias]

I meant yeoman-generator version.

[julkue]

Sorry, in Germany it was late
yeoman-generator: 0.22.5
Project reference

[benitolopez]

Same issue here. yeoman-generator v.0.22.5

[julkue]

@SBoudrias bump

[benitolopez]

Personally I’ve solved the issue using an NPM module instead of the built-in remote utility. And I agree with @SBoudrias (#766 (comment)) regarding the remote and fetch utilities: those tasks can be accomplished with other NPM modules.

By the way, it's just my opinion :)

[julkue]

@benitolopez What npm module?

I don't think it is a good idea to turn off using built in functions instead of debugging them. Many people require same things so I am glad that the built in utilities exist and I don't need to worry about vendor things.

[benitolopez]

@julmot download and download-status

[julkue]

@benitolopez Thanks for letting me know. How are you handling remote fetches where you only want to download a single file or directory, not the entire zip?

[benitolopez]

I'm using that module to download the whole zip so I've never tried with a single file. But the example in the download page downloads a zip and a single file. Just delete the "zip" line.

[julkue]

@benitolopez I can confirm it shows an example to download a single file. However, since GitHub doesn't provide download links for single folders of a GitHub repo I would need to download the entire repo, extract it into a temporary folder and copy the things from there. Seems to be not a really profit instead of debugging this.remote.

[SBoudrias]

@julmot I'll get to it, but I'm fairly certain it's an issue with your code specifically as you're the only one who reported this issue - or any issues regarding asynchronous execution. As such, it's not really to the top of my todo list currently.

If you can create a reducer test case generator reproducing this issue, it'll help me look into it faster. Also, it might just help you figure out the issue if it's effectively related to your own code.

[julkue]

@SBoudrias on your wish

Demo generator

Here is a ZIP containing a demo generator:
generator-demo.zip

Steps to reproduce

All you need to do is extract it and run $ npm link inside ./app/. Then create a temporary folder and run $ yo demo inside.

Expected behaviour

This will output:

I have framed the wrong part. All remote related logs should be after the Fetching statements.

[SBoudrias]

Oh, I totally misunderstood your issue.

The create x logs are all shown at the end of the process because any files operations happens on a memory store. As so, they're not commited to the user disk until the generator is done running. So effectively, all file writes happens all at once at the end of the process.

[julkue]

@SBoudrias Thanks for letting me know.
Even if yeoman-generator writes files to a buffer and only stores them in the destination if the generator is finished, then the log should still be in the same order as the commands were called?
If this is not possible due to internal reasons, is there a way to hide those "create" statements for better understanding?

[SBoudrias]

@julmot what is really the issue you want to fix?

[julkue]

@SBoudrias I would like to have a console output that shows the tasks in the same order as they are processed in the background. If an action like remote is handled before this.installDependencies() then this should be printed before. With the current log I'm associating a wrong behaviour.

[SBoudrias]

Hey, you could manually use this.log(), but we have no plans to change the way we log stuff than in the actual real order they are happening.

[julkue]

I find the current log behavior confusing and I think others too. Is there a way to hide those "create x" statements?

[SBoudrias]

No. We haven't had complaint from end users and we want to keep the experience consistent across our ecosystem.