Laravel Nova tool wouldn't update if symlink is set to true on composer.json

Question

So I am running into a weird issue. I used Laravel Nova (2) command to generate a tool. It sits at ./nova-components/CustomNovaDashboard. In order for the deployment to work on Laravel Vapor, I had to add the below to my parent composer.json.

{
            "type": "path",
            "url": "./nova-components/CustomNovaDashboard",
            "options": {
                "symlink": false
            }
        }

This above allows the code to get deployed, because the absence of symlink in options would otherwise throw the following error:

include(/tmp/vendor/composer/../acme/custom-nova-dashboard/src/ToolServiceProvider.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory

But the problem now is that when I run npm run watch inside ./nova-components/CustomNovaDashboard, the code in development never updates, because somehow there is a copy of the code that sits in vendor/acme/custom-nova-dashboard that doesn't pick up the changes.

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

I found a solution, it was quite simple.

In my vapor.yml, I had to add COMPOSER_MIRROR_PATH_REPOS=1 before composer install.

build:
      - 'COMPOSER_MIRROR_PATH_REPOS=1 composer install'
      - 'php artisan event:cache'
      - 'npm ci && npm run dev && rm -rf node_modules'

This ensures the symbolic link generated by nova:tool works on dev and prod similarly.

Just don't forget to set "symlink": true in your composer.json. Or leave it as is originally generated by the nova:tool command.