Skip dangling symlinks when archiving site content by epeicher · Pull Request #4038 · Automattic/studio

epeicher · 2026-07-01T17:37:59Z

Related issues

Related to: reprint-pulled (WP Cloud) sites shipping a dangling advanced-cache.php drop-in symlink.

How AI was used in this PR

Claude Code reproduced the failure, traced it to fs.realpathSync on a dangling symlink aborting the archive, wrote the guard and the unit test, and verified the fix end-to-end (a real preview-site creation against an affected site). I reviewed the diff.

Proposed Changes

Creating a preview site — and pushing — from a reprint-pulled WP Cloud site failed with:

Failed to create preview site: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '.../wp-content/advanced-cache.php'

Those sites keep the WP Cloud advanced-cache.php cache drop-in as a symlink pointing into wordpress/drop-ins/, which the pull doesn't download — so it dangles. When archiving wp-content, fs.realpathSync on that broken link threw ENOENT and aborted the whole archive.

Now a dangling symlink is skipped (with a warning) instead of failing the whole operation, so preview create/update and push succeed. This makes the archiver robust to any broken symlink — which matters for sites already pulled, since they keep the dangling drop-in until re-pulled.

The reprint side — not creating the dangling symlink in the first place — is fixed separately in WordPress/reprint.

Testing Instructions

On a reprint-pulled WP Cloud site (its wp-content/advanced-cache.php is a broken symlink), rebuild the CLI (npm run cli:build) and run:
node apps/cli/dist/cli/main.mjs preview create --path ~/Studio/<site>
Before: fails with ENOENT ... advanced-cache.php. After: the preview site is created successfully.
Unit tests: npm test -- apps/cli/lib/tests/archive.test.ts (includes a dangling-symlink case).

Pre-merge Checklist

Have you checked for TypeScript, React or other console errors? (tsc -p apps/cli clean, ESLint clean)

Reprint-pulled WP Cloud sites keep the advanced-cache.php drop-in as a symlink whose target (wordpress/drop-ins/...) isn't pulled, so it dangles. fs.realpathSync on it threw ENOENT and aborted the whole archive, failing 'preview create'/'update' (and push export) with 'Failed to create preview site: ENOENT ... advanced-cache.php'. Skip entries whose realpath fails, in both archiveSiteContent and the default exporter.

wpmobilebot · 2026-07-01T17:57:14Z

📊 Performance Test Results

Comparing 9214034 vs trunk

app-size

Metric	trunk	`9214034`	Diff	Change
App Size (Mac)	1411.75 MB	1411.75 MB	+0.00 MB	⚪ 0.0%

site-editor

Metric	trunk	`9214034`	Diff	Change
load	754 ms	1115 ms	+361 ms	🔴 47.9%

site-startup

Metric	trunk	`9214034`	Diff	Change
siteCreation	6487 ms	6482 ms	5 ms	⚪ 0.0%
siteStartup	2389 ms	2388 ms	1 ms	⚪ 0.0%

Results are median values from multiple test runs.

Legend: 🟢 Improvement (faster) | 🔴 Regression (slower) | ⚪ No change (<50ms diff)

fredrikekelund

Good fix regardless of whether the site is Reprint-pulled or not 👍

One thing worth looking into is the calculateDirectorySizeForArchive() function. I'm getting a warning like this from there:

Error processing /Users/fredrik/Studio/my-true-website/wp-content/advanced-cache.php: Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/Users/fredrik/Studio/my-true-website/wp-content/advanced-cache.php'
    at async Object.stat (node:internal/fs/promises:1038:18)
    at async file:///Users/fredrik/Code/studio/apps/cli/dist/cli/rewrite-wp-cli-post-content-wf2YZvuH.mjs:44:22
    at async Promise.all (index 0)
    at async calculateSize (file:///Users/fredrik/Code/studio/apps/cli/dist/cli/rewrite-wp-cli-post-content-wf2YZvuH.mjs:36:5) {
  errno: -2,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  syscall: 'stat',
  path: '/Users/fredrik/Studio/my-true-website/wp-content/advanced-cache.php'

This looks like the exact same underlying problem, so it seems sensible to address in this PR

fredrikekelund · 2026-07-02T12:26:23Z

+			let resolvedPath: string;
+			try {
+				resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( path.join( wpContentPath, relativePath ) );
+			} catch ( error ) {
+				// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.
+				console.warn( `Skipping ${ archiveEntryPath }: ${ error }` );
+				continue;
+			}
+			archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, {
 				name: archiveEntryPath,
 			} );


Suggested change

let resolvedPath: string;

try {

resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( path.join( wpContentPath, relativePath ) );

} catch ( error ) {

// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.

console.warn( `Skipping ${ archiveEntryPath }: ${ error }` );

continue;

}

archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, {

name: archiveEntryPath,

} );

try {

const resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( path.join( wpContentPath, relativePath ) );

archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, { name: archiveEntryPath } );

} catch ( error ) {

// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.

console.warn( `Skipping ${ archiveEntryPath }: ${ error }` );

}

Optional nit, but it doesn't seem necessary to call fs.realpathSync() in a different scope to archiveBuilder.file()

fredrikekelund · 2026-07-02T12:27:40Z

+			let resolvedPath: string;
+			try {
+				resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( fullEntryPathOnDisk );
+			} catch ( error ) {
+				// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.
+				console.warn( `Skipping ${ entryPathRelativeToArchiveRoot }: ${ error }` );
+				continue;
+			}
+			this.archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, {
 				name: entryPathRelativeToArchiveRoot,
 			} );


Suggested change

let resolvedPath: string;

try {

resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( fullEntryPathOnDisk );

} catch ( error ) {

// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.

console.warn( `Skipping ${ entryPathRelativeToArchiveRoot }: ${ error }` );

continue;

}

this.archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, {

name: entryPathRelativeToArchiveRoot,

} );

try {

const resolvedPath = fs.realpathSync( path.join( wpContentPath, relativePath ) );

archiveBuilder.file( resolvedPath, { name: archiveEntryPath } );

} catch ( error ) {

// Dangling symlink. Skip it rather than aborting the whole archive.

console.warn( `Skipping ${ archiveEntryPath }: ${ error }` );

}

Optional nit. Same thing here

epeicher · 2026-07-02T14:02:23Z

Good fix regardless of whether the site is Reprint-pulled or not 👍

I agree, the user could create dangling symlinks and we don't want to break some flows.

One thing worth looking into is the calculateDirectorySizeForArchive() function. I'm getting a warning like this from there:
This looks like the exact same underlying problem, so it seems sensible to address in this PR

Yes, that's the same error, let me look at it

The push file-selection UI computes sizes via the getFileSize IPC handler and calculateDirectorySizeForArchive, both of which stat through symlinks. A dangling symlink (e.g. the advanced-cache.php drop-in on reprint-pulled sites) made getFileSize throw — logged twice with full stacks by Electron — and made the directory walk log a noisy stack trace. Since such entries are skipped when archiving, count them as zero and log a single Skipping line instead.

epeicher · 2026-07-02T15:14:19Z

Thanks for the review @fredrikekelund, I have addressed the other functions that were causing noisy warnings. I have turned down the warning so it's still logged that the symlink is skipped, but in a controlled way. Please let me know your view on that, the commit is 4ab9f7a

…-broken-symlinks

fredrikekelund

WordPress/reprint#296 already clears the advanced-cache.php symlink specifically, but I tested this with a manually created dangling symlink. Works great 👍

fredrikekelund · 2026-07-07T07:59:38Z

+	const fullPath = nodePath.join( site.details.path, ...filePath );
+	try {
+		return fs.statSync( fullPath ).size;
+	} catch ( error ) {
+		// Dangling symlink or unreadable entry. It's skipped when archiving,
+		// so count it as zero rather than failing the size check.
+		console.warn( `Skipping ${ fullPath }: ${ error }` );
+		return 0;
+	}


Nice addition 👍

epeicher added 2 commits July 1, 2026 19:13

Rephrase the comment to be more succint

1706064

github-actions Bot assigned epeicher Jul 1, 2026

epeicher mentioned this pull request Jul 1, 2026

Fix studio push for native reprint-pulled sites #3994

Merged

fredrikekelund reviewed Jul 2, 2026

View reviewed changes

epeicher added 2 commits July 2, 2026 16:53

Keep archiveBuilder in the same scope than fs realPathSync

a3aa504

epeicher enabled auto-merge (squash) July 2, 2026 15:14

Merge branch 'trunk' of github.com:Automattic/studio into fix-archive…

9214034

…-broken-symlinks

fredrikekelund approved these changes Jul 7, 2026

View reviewed changes

epeicher merged commit a92ebfb into trunk Jul 7, 2026
11 checks passed

epeicher deleted the fix-archive-broken-symlinks branch July 7, 2026 08:09

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Skip dangling symlinks when archiving site content - #4038

Skip dangling symlinks when archiving site content#4038
epeicher merged 5 commits into
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fix-archive-broken-symlinks

epeicher commented Jul 1, 2026

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epeicher commented Jul 1, 2026

Related issues

How AI was used in this PR

Proposed Changes

Testing Instructions

Pre-merge Checklist

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📊 Performance Test Results

app-size

site-editor

site-startup

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