How would I add a mutagen ignore for node_modules in _all_ subdirectories?

[jakeparis]

I have a wordpress project with a bunch of plugins, each of which has their own node_modules and .git directories.

I've added the following my config.yml:

upload_dirs:
  - node_modues
  - wp-content/uploads

but it seems like all the node_modules and .git directories aren't being ignored, because when I first start mutagen, and run ddev mutagen monitor, I'm pretty sure I'm seeing the git hash files and the node_module stuff fly by on the scanner. So I'm not sure this is really ignoring any subdirectory with these names.

When I run ddevf mutagen st <projectname> -l I see:

Ignores:
		/.git
		/.tarballs
		/.ddev/db_snapshots
		/.ddev/.importdb*
		.DS_Store
		.idea
		/node_modules
		/wp-content/uploads

According to the mutagen ignores docs, anything starting with a slash (or containing a slash) means that thing is only relative from the root directory, but if you have no slash (like node_modules), any sub directory with that name is also ignored. So is this a bug that I enter node_modules in my upload_dirs config, and it gets into the mutagen config as /node_modules ? Does this also mean that only .git at the top-level is being ignored?

Or perhaps I'm doing something else wrong?

[stasadev]

Hi @jakeparis,

You need to edit .ddev/mutagen/mutagen.yml to add the designed paths without /

See https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/stable/users/install/performance/#advanced-mutagen-configuration-options

[stasadev]

You'll only need to update it if we make changes to it (or if you update upload_dirs)

I recommend always reading the Release Notes when upgrading DDEV to ensure you don’t miss anything important..

[jakeparis]

Thank you all for the advice.

What OS and Docker provider are you using?

I'm on Mac, and I'm using OrbStack for a docker provider.

[rfay]

Orbstack is mighty fast, and WP projects are often not terribly heavyweight, so do a quick check to see if you need mutagen in the first place.

[jakeparis]

I turned off mutagen, and I can't make changes fast enough to see a lag. I tried doing big changes via changing git commits and and then some builds, but no matter what I do, whatever I see on my host system is what i see on the webpage.

So unless my test methodology is flawed, it seems mutagen isn't needed for me, and I appreciate the advice. 🙏

[rfay]

Just a note that you probably misunderstand the purpose of mutagen. Its goal is fast webserver performance. When you use a bind-mount instead of mutagen (as you are now), php-fpm has to open every php file it wants to use every time it uses it. And since the bind-mount is a type of network mount, it has to be checked against the host-side file. All that is the classic webserving performance problem of docker-based PHP projects with many files. (With mutagen, the updating of files with the host-side files is done asynchronously, so the php-fpm process doesn't result in hits on the mounted files). The bottom line is that if you're satisfied with how the project is working in your browser, all is well!