A command to link backpack packages dir, what do you think?

[lakuapik]

When we install backpack with php artisan backpack:install, all files are published including the packages dir. The packages dir weight around ~87MB. I dont really want to include all those packages into my codebase, so instead i create a command to make a symlink of vendor/backpack/crud/src/public/packages dir into public/packages. just like what php artisan storage:link did, now its only weight 4KB in the codebase.

i am new with backpack, what do you think?

what is your current implementation of this?

a sneek peek of the command

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;

class BackpackLink extends Command
{
    protected $signature = 'backpack:link';

    protected $description = 'Link backpack asset packages into public folder';

    public function handle(): int
    {
        $target = public_path('packages');

        if (file_exists($target)) {
            unlink($target);
        }

        $ok = symlink(
            base_path('vendor/backpack/crud/src/public/packages'),
            $target
        );

        $ok ? $this->info('Success') : $this->error('Failed');

        return $ok ? Command::SUCCESS : Command::FAILURE;
    }
}

[tabacitu]

I love it. Symlink is a great one-project solution.

We've been considering the symlink as a general solution for a while too, but it has one big downside we can't avoid for some projects: other packages can't add stuff to the /packages/ directory. For example, currently:

• backpack/crud adds stuff to packages/*
• backpack/filemanager adds some stuff to packages/elfinder

With the current directory structure & the symlink, I don't see how you can install backpack/filemanager and have it running.

Solution 1 - directory hierarchy by php packages

However, with a breaking change, we could:

• move the assets backpack\crud needs into packages/backpack/crud;
• move the assets backpack\filemanager needs into packages/backpack/filenamanger;

That is to say... instead of thinking of packages as a place where all JS & CSS assets live at the same level, we could split them by the PHP packages that need them:

- ...
- database/
- public/
    - assets/
    - packages/
        - backpack/
            - crud/
                - animate.css/ 
                - select2/
                - datatables/
            - filemanager/
                - elfinder/
- resources/
- ...

Solution 2 - reserve 'packages' for backpack/crud

By convention, we could decide NOTHING gets added to packages, that's for backpack/crud only. We could even rename packages to smth else, like admin or backpack-crud or backpack-core.

But then all addons would have to add their own CSS & JS somewhere, usually by publishing it, and where would they do that?

---

Solution 1 is much cleaner I think, as it also allows people to add their own stuff to packages, just not in the existing directories. And it also kind of makes it obvious where those third-party libraries (datatables, jquery, select2) are used... and that you probably shouldn't edit anything there.

---

That being said. No matter the solution to the problem above, symlink method will not (and cannot) solve #116 (the fact that the Backpack ZIP file is big). Quite the opposite - it will just make it impossible to ever remove the JS&CSS assets from the PHP package. So I think it's safe to exclude symlink as a general solution to our assets problem.

[tabacitu]

PS. Love the command, btw. Simple and effective for a lot of people. Thank you for sharing 🙏

[lakuapik]

Thank you for this comprehensive explanation. Right, this solution is only valid if we dont use any other packages/libraries that will publish to public/packages folder. For me, any other js/css libs would go to public/vendor.