Unable to override path for NodeJS binary in Assetic config

Question

I am having problems overriding the path to the Node.js binary used by the UglifyCSS filter in Assetic. Supposedly one can set the path in the /app/config/config.yml (Symfony docs, SO question), but it does not seem to have any effect, no matter where I put the overridden value.

To debug this, I changed line 37-39 in vendor/kriswallsmith/assetic/src/Assetic/Filter/UglifyCssFilter.php to output the value:

/**
 * @param string $uglifycssBin Absolute path to the uglifycss executable
 * @param string $nodeBin      Absolute path to the folder containg node.js executable
 */
public function __construct($uglifycssBin = '/usr/bin/uglifycss', $nodeBin = null)
{
        throw new \RuntimeException('Path to node executable '. $nodeBin . ' Uglify executable '. $uglifycssBin . "\n\$PATH: ". getenv('PATH'));

Here is the result

$ ../bin/console assetic:dump --env=prod

                                                                                                                                                                                
  [RuntimeException]                                                                                                                                                            
  Path to node executable /usr/local/bin/node Uglify executable /home/myuser/dev/ptflow-api/app/../node_modules/.bin/uglifycss                                                
  $PATH: /home/myuser/.sdkman/candidates/java/current/bin:/home/myuser/go/bin:/home/myuser/.local/bin:/home/myuser/bin/Telegram:/home/myuser/.yarn/bin:/home/carleri  
  k/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/.bin:/home/myuser/bin:/home/myuser/.yarn/bin:/home/myuser/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/.bin:/home/myuser/go/bin:/home/carleri  
  k/.go/bin:/home/myuser/.cargo/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                

This shows that $nodeBin always has the value /usr/local/bin/node. This is actually the right path on my system, but I need to be able to set it manually for it to work in a Docker container that does not find the right executable.

The example configs I have seen so far differ in whether to use the parameter path assetic.node or assetic.node.bin, but I have set both, in addition to assetic.filters.uglifycss.node:

assetic:
    node: /not/a/path/config.yml/node
        bin: '/usr/bin/node'

I also found a file that seemed to give some insight:

$ cat ./vendor/symfony/assetic-bundle/Resources/config/filters/uglifycss.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <parameters>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.class">Assetic\Filter\UglifyCssFilter</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.bin">/usr/bin/uglifycss</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.node">%assetic.node.bin%</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.timeout">null</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.node_paths">%assetic.node.paths%</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.expand_vars">false</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.ugly_comments">false</parameter>
        <parameter key="assetic.filter.uglifycss.cute_comments">false</parameter>
    </parameters>

    <services>
        <service id="assetic.filter.uglifycss" class="%assetic.filter.uglifycss.class%">
            <tag name="assetic.filter" alias="uglifycss" />
            <argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.bin%</argument>
            <argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.node%</argument>
            <call method="setTimeout"><argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.timeout%</argument></call>
            <call method="setNodePaths"><argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.node_paths%</argument></call>
            <call method="setExpandVars"><argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.expand_vars%</argument></call>
            <call method="setUglyComments"><argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.ugly_comments%</argument></call>
            <call method="setCuteComments"><argument>%assetic.filter.uglifycss.cute_comments%</argument></call>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>

This seems to indicate that setting either assetic.filter.uglifycss.node or assetic.node.bin both should work. Neither does... The XML file seems to describe how to call the filter using reflection. I am not that well versed in PHP development (NodeJS, Java, .NET background), so I am not sure which code will use this further up the stack.

I am using Symfony 3.3 and the Assetic 2.8 bundle.

Answer 1

OMG, I hate this non-intuitive setup. It seems that not only build artifact are cached, so are config values! I found out by grepping the entire project for /usr/local, finding it references in /var/cache.

I had to delete the cache for the changes to take place:

PHP Warning:  count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/myuser/dev/ptflow-api/vendor/symfony/monolog-bundle/DependencyInjection/Configuration.php on line 654
PHP Warning:  count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in /home/myuser/dev/ptflow-api/vendor/symfony/monolog-bundle/DependencyInjection/Configuration.php on line 654

                                                                               
  [RuntimeException]                                                           
  Path to node executable /tmp/nodejs Uglify executable /home/myuser/dev/pt  
  flow-api/app/../node_modules/.bin/uglifycss                                  
  $PATH: /tmp:/usr/bin                                                         
                                                                               

assetic:dump [--forks FORKS] [--watch] [--force] [--period PERIOD] [-h|--help] [-q|--quiet] [-v|vv|vvv|--verbose] [-V|--version] [--ansi] [--no-ansi] [-n|--no-interaction] [-e|--env ENV] [--no-debug] [--] <command> [<write_to>]

The actual config paths in the Symfony config was not assetic.node.bin, but assetic.node. Same for the filter.