Theme with no static files won't get deployed

[davidverholen]

see #4725

Preconditions

1. Magento 2.1.2

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a new Theme with any parent
2. Do not add any static files

Expected result

1. Theme will get deployed with static files from parent theme

Actual result

1. theme does not get deployed
2. setup:static-content:deply --theme=Any/theme results in error

In the deploy command, the installed themes are determined by collecting all themes from all static files. If a theme does not have static files it will not get deployed

adding any static file to the theme can be used as a workaround

[donniesg]

This problem is still around on 2.1.8. I have some child themes that only modifies layouts xml and not css are working fine in development mode but kept getting ignored by setup:static-content:deploy in production mode. Adding an empty.less file in web/css folder helps.

[appymedia]

Same issue here. I know its not the place to rant but whatever... Magento 2 should not be marked production ready. On a simple store setup I have ran into countless bugs, it borders on ridiculous. Yes I use CE but I would have touched it had I known the state it was truly in. I stupidly assumed because of the size of Magento and the time v2 had been in the wild it would be fine, my mistake. I won't make the same mistake twice.

[orlangur]

@appymedia well, I would not say this particular issue is a showstopper of any kind. There are quite a lot of companies successfully running live stores since 2.0 GA, so, it's just a matter of professionalism.

[appymedia]

Professionalism? I will give you an example of lack of professionalism, this bug. Reported NOV 2016, 9 month ago, yes 9 months later and it still exists and I STILL waste time finding this issue to resolve my problem. I have done a similar process with circa 20 bugs getting my simple site live, most of the issues accepted and jus....well....still there....months and sometimes years in the wild, its what I said it was, ridiculous. I am not alone. You know when things are bad when you find stuff like this....

https://www.facebook.com/magentoissatan/

Can't wait to get away from it, should have just put together my own specific solution in the first place. Might miss all the bells and whistles but I can build what I need over time and not suffer like this!

[orlangur]

@appymedia I have no idea how trivial the fix is, however, as you see a simple workaround exists thus this bug obviously is not of high priority. More than that, theme without a single .less file is not so frequent situation.

[appymedia]

9 months isn't low priority, its no priority. An as I said this isn't the only bug I ran into. What you hear from me here is the compound frustration of DAYS working into WEEKS of wasted time with bugs. I'm a PHP dev in the day, I've commercially wrote code in c#, PHP, c, c++, assembly language etc for over 20 years. Its not like I'm a super noob looking for a 'plug and play' solution. I've also managed servers for over 10 years as well so environment issues I accept but as I keep repeating Magento needs to sort out what its doing and stop people believing this is stable. Personally I think this is beta software and should be presented as such, GA, no way.

[orlangur]

@appymedia I truly understand your frustration and would be a bit happier myself if Magento would not contain bugs at all. Just that I believe there are much more important issues among 2500+ reported and whoever knows how much existent than this particular one. Like problems with indexing, payment, shipping methods.

Seeing a little wider picture I also notice how the things are moving in the right direction, main priorities to my understanding should be automated testing (especially for bugs to avoid regressions) and analyzing community feedback in a timely manner. Having all crucial scenarios covered with tests it is not possible to have buggy product, right? 😉

[appymedia]

Indeed, completely agree. I do think the GA was way too early. An if they wanted to do it they should be fixing bugs like crazy because years later after release and after I talk with more dev's a lot of them are not having a great time and working round a lot of issues. Could be fantastic software, just the handling of things. Bring on the unit testing!

[korostii]

Having all crucial scenarios covered with tests it is not possible to have buggy product, right?

Well, you could still have some counter-intuitive and mind-blowing behavior treated as "intended".
My favorite example so far: #5299 (comment)

Enforcing such backward behavior through tests won't help in any way, thus there's always room for human error causing bugs. (And, to go even further, the tests can have bugs in them. Would you mind covering your tests with some more tests?)

[korostii]

Also, technically there's over 8800 reported issues. Those 2500 are just the ones which aren't resolved yet. Neither of those numbers can help you understand whether the "things are moving in the right direction"

I found the following filter to be more informative:
https://github.com/magento/magento2/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20label%3A2.1.x%20label%3Aacknowledged%20

There are more than 700 of issues admitted to be present on current stable branch (2.1.x). Among those, in its one year of existence, only 200 got fixed (add to that the fact some of these fixes aren't even released and stay on branch develop).

I would say that fixing half a bug per day on the average isn't good enough.

[hostep]

To add some constructive feedback, I believe this is a duplicate of #3754 which got fixed in the develop branch with MAGETWO-52102

[orlangur]

@hostep great, thanks for your finding 😉 It's much more advisable to check if the issue is still present in develop branch than write another dozen of "useful" comments on how slow Magento is in fixing bugs.

@appymedia,

Reported NOV 2016, 9 month ago, yes 9 months later and it still exists and I STILL waste time finding this issue to resolve my problem.

It was fixed in Jun 2016 actually, FIVE months before this issue creation. All what was needed to figure this out was to check same steps against installation from develop branch. However, at that time process of 2.1.x bugfixes contribution did not exist yet and according to old process this issue would be simply closed with "fixed in develop" remark.

Now such process is established and any constructive community member may make Magento better for himself and others.