Move the assets folder to public/assets

[leofeyer]

Implements #7093

With these surprisingly few changes, we can get rid of the assets directory in the project root, as the assets and Contao components are installed directly in the public/assets folder.

I know that we originally wanted to install the Contao components in public/components, but that would break all existing references in $GLOBALS['TL_CSS'], $GLOBALS['TL_JAVASCRIPT'] and so on. The current solution is almost 100% backwards compatible because no paths change at all.

[aschempp]

How does this handle the case that any existing Contao installation has contao-component-dir set to assets and not public/assets?

[leofeyer]

There are two possible solutions:

1. We update the composer.json file in the manager (preferred).
2. We keep symlinking the assets directory if contao-component-dir is set to assets.

[ausi]

I think we should improve BC a bit, otherwise this is the way to go IMO 👍

[leofeyer]

How does this handle the case that any existing Contao installation has contao-component-dir set to assets and not public/assets?

@aschempp I have added a BC layer in e41594b. I would still prefer the manager to update the composer.json file, if that‘s possible.

[richardhj]

In #7093 we talked about that the assets and public/assets folders are reserved by the Symfony framework.
I guess the solution, for those using a Symfony app, is to use a different folder for Symfony's version of assets..?

Is becoming compatible with symfony/asset-mapper not an alternative goal here?

[leofeyer]

It is, and that‘s exactly what the pull request does. After it has been merged, Contao will no longer use the assets folder. But of course, public/assets must be shared by Contao and Symfony to avoid BC breaks.

assets/                <-- available for the Symfony asset mapper

public/assets/
    ace/               <-- Contao component
    css/               <-- Contao
    images/            <-- Contao
    js/                <-- Contao
    styles/            <-- Symfony
    app.js             <-- Symfony

Anything beyond that can only be done in Contao 6.

[richardhj]

If there are no naming conflicts, that would work fine! Otherwise one could always also change the output folder of asset mapper. So two promising paths after the PR was merged

[ausi]

Do we need something that actively deletes an already existing symlink from /public/assets to /assets?
With a check like !$this->symlinkAssets && is_link(Path::join($this->webDir, 'assets'))?

[leofeyer]

Added in 742e647.

[ausi]

LGTM 🎉
(But I did not test it manually)

[leofeyer]

I have tested it extensively and found another bug: ce48ebc Now everything should work.