Deployed code messes up the symlinks and app can't start

I’m deploying a nodeJS app with Github actions and it seems that once the code gets to the azure web app server the symlinks from within node_modules/.bin folder are all messed up and app doesn’t start.

For example when I run my code locally, if I do a node ./node_modules/.bin/next --help it works, and ./node_modules/.bin/next is actually a symlink to ../next/dist/bin/next

But after code is deployed on Azure with the webapps-deploy action it seems that ./node_modules/.bin/next is no longer a symlink to ../next/dist/bin/next but it actually becomes a text file with ../next/dist/bin/next as its contents and so if I connect to ssh to the Azure server and run node ./node_modules/.bin/next --help (same command I run locally, or that also works ok inside the GitHub action, there I get an error:

/home/site/wwwroot>node ./node_modules/.bin/next --help
/home/site/wwwroot/node_modules/.bin/next:1
../next/dist/bin/next
^

SyntaxError: Unexpected token '.'
    at wrapSafe (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1047:16)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1097:27)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1153:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:977:32)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:877:14)
    at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (internal/modules/run_main.js:74:12)
    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:18:47

[0gust1]

Had same kind of issue too.

In my case I have a dependency that is a symbolic link to another folder of the repo (it’s a monorepo).

Root cause may be linked to the App service sandbox model : https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Azure-Web-App-sandbox#symbolic-link-creation

I did a quick and dirty workaround in my github action, just before the azure/webapps-deploy step.

- name: HACK - copy symbolic link to directory (Azure & symbolic links...)
      working-directory: ./backend
      run: cp -Lr node_modules/dependency/symlinked node_modules/dependency/symlinked-COPY && rm node_modules/dependency/symlinked && mv node_modules/dependency/symlinked-COPY node_modules/dependency/symlinked

[carterm]

npm install $(npm pack <folder> | tail -1)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21425980/npm-install-without-symlinks-option-not-working