Google cloub build changed (for no reason?)

Question

I have a nodejs project running on app engine. This worked fine until yesterday. My package.json is also uploaded becuase it contains dependencies and start script. When I deploay a google cloud build is automatically run. Since yesterstay it also tries to run "npm run build". Of course this fails because I don't upload any source files.

I did not configure this and I'm wondering why the behaviour changed.

To upload I use the gcloud comand:

gcloud app deploy --version v1

My app.yml looks like:

# [START app_yaml]
runtime: nodejs16
instance_class: F1
automatic_scaling:
  max_instances: 1

entrypoint: npm run cloud-start

handlers:
- url: /api/.*
  script: auto
  secure: always

- url: /(.*\.(gif|png|jpg|css|js|json)(|\.map))$
  static_files: dist/www/\1
  upload: dist/www/(.*)(|\.map)
  secure: always
  expiration: "100d 0h"

- url: /|(.*)|index.html
  static_files: dist/www/index.html
  upload: dist/www/index.html
  expiration: "0d 0h"
  secure: always

# [END app_yaml]

.cloudignore:

# Ignore everything
/[!.]*
/.?*

# Except the Cloud Function files we want to deploy
!/package.json
!/package-lock.json
!/dist/**

#!include:.gitignore

Answer 1

I got hit by this today as well, and it took me the whole day to finally figure out.

This is 100% a Google functional change for the gcloud app deploy script for nodejs.

Thankfully, there's a simple workaround below, but first I want to rant and give context: this afternoon when I deployed with a totally minor and unrelated change I received a buildbreaker. Everything worked fine locally, so I tried re-deploying a previous build to the dev environment. It, too, failed.

After researching, I found the same thing you did; an unexpected call to npm build. After a lot more research, I found the workaround.

It turns out that Google arbitrarily decided a few days ago to start running build if it exists in package.json as a fallback when there is no gcp-build script. Thankfully, including a blank gcp-build script in package.json fixes the issue. See below for an example

I never received a notice from google cloud that they were doing this.

I, like you, pre-package my build using the npm build script in my package.json, then run gcloud deploy while suppressing the original source folder.

I, like you, did not include a gcp-build script, because I had no special build needs.

Workaround

Add "gcp-build": "" to the scripts section of your package.json.

Example:

{
    "name": "myapp",
    "main": "mybuild/index.js",
    "scripts": {
      "build": "tsc",
      "start": "node mybuild/index.js",
      "gcp-build": ""
    },
}

If there is a gcp-build command in the scripts section, Google Cloud will try to run that, rather than build. If it's blank, it will do nothing but most imporantly will not fall back to build.

Future Reference

This is current information and there is a very good chance google will change this functionality very soon. I will try to keep an eye on developments and update as necessary

update
Looks like google has rolled this out to cloud functions as well.