Usage of not-found.tsx in root (App Router)

[tadasber]

Hi,

I have been trying to understand the correct way of using not-found.tsx in app root. Next.js documentation states:

The layout above is called a root layout because it's defined at the root of the app directory. The root layout is required and must contain html and body tags. [0]

next-intl documentation gives an example [1]:

// Since we have a root not-found.tsx page, a layout file
// is required, even if it's just passing children through.
export default function RootLayout({children}) {
return children;
}

The given example does not contain html and body tags, even though Next.js "requires" for these tags to be used for root layout.

How to reconcile these differences? From a practical stand point, not using html tags in root layout seems to work fine, but maybe it causes instability down the line?

Thanks,
Tadas

[0] https://nextjs.org/docs/app/getting-started/layouts-and-pages
[1] https://next-intl.dev/docs/environments/error-files

[amannn]

Next.js is unfortunately a bit inconsistent with this currently.

If you check the internationalization guide from Next.js, it contains this statement:

The root layout can also be nested in the new folder (e.g. app/[lang]/layout.js).

I found that practically the pass-through layout is sometimes required and doesn't cause any issues.

I think this will finally be resolved cleanly in Next.js once rootParams ships and layouts in nested folders are first-class citizens.

[tadasber]

That makes sense, thank you!