node_modules not copied to output folder when running dotnet publish

Steps to reproduce

• Create a new ASP.NET Core Web App
• Add a package.json file and specify at least one dependency
• Add “npm install” in the scripts/prepublish section of project.json
• Add “node_modules” in the publishOptions/include section of project.json
• Run dotnet publish
• See that node_modules is not included in the output

I’ve created a GitHub repo with a project showing this.

https://github.com/henningst/NodeModulePublishRepro

• Clone the repo above
• Run dotnet publish without opening it in Visual Studio first (because VS is automatically installing npm packages).

Expected behavior

node_modules should be copied to the output directory when running dotnet publish because:

• npm install runs using the prepublish hook
• node_modules is specified to be included

It should be possible to include the node_modules directory or any other file or directory in the publish output, even if these files or directories does not exist before running scripts using the prepublish hook.

Actual behavior

When running dotnet publish on a webapp with dependencies on node packages, the node_modules directory is not copied to the output directory even if npm install is run with the prepublish hook and node_modules is specified to be included.

It works if the node_modules directory exists before running dotnet publish, but when you run dotnet publish for the first time, node_modules will not exist before npm install is run via the prepublish hook.

Try running dotnet publish a second time, and you will see that node_modules is copied.

Environment data

dotnet --info output:

.NET Command Line Tools (1.0.0-preview2-003121)

Product Information: Version: 1.0.0-preview2-003121 Commit SHA-1 hash: 1e9d529bc5

Runtime Environment: OS Name: Windows OS Version: 10.0.10586 OS Platform: Windows RID: win10-x64

[dasMulli]

@zelliott haven’t looked at it in detail but I guess these packages will pull in a lot of dependencies and tracing them all down would be hard…

Any folder or file that is not yet part of the project can still be imported manually (using Include="…" instead of Update="…"):

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="node_modules\foo\**" CopyToPublishDirectory="PreserveNewest" />
</ItemGroup>

[henningst]

Looks like this is a dupe of https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3828