Cli copy does not respect platform dir config

Project Setup

Added capacitor to existing non ionic project and ran the command: npx cap add ios

Cap created ios dir at root of project. I modified the config to look as follows:

{
  "appId": "my.sample.app",
  "appName": "my-sample",
  "bundledWebRuntime": false,
  "webDir": "dist/apps/web"
}

Everything works as expected

I moved the ios dir to apps/ios and modified the config to:

{
  "appId": "my.sample.app",
  "appName": "my-sample",
  "bundledWebRuntime": false,
  "webDir": "dist/apps/web",
  "ios": {
    "platformDir": "apps/ios"
  }
}

running any cap commands for ios like npx cap copy ios result in the error: [error] ios" platform has not been created. Use "capacitor add ios" to add the platform project. .

Adding a dummy ios directory allows the selectPlatform call to pass but does not respect the platform dir for copying any assets. https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor/blob/5e6feb6f69a327993613b0579310507209183e6c/cli/src/config.ts#L239

I am new to the project but I think the copy and other platform specific commands should be changed to always check and respect the platformDir config.

ex. https://github.com/ionic-team/capacitor/blob/master/cli/src/tasks/copy.ts#L34-L37

My only motivation is to be able to move the platform dir to a new location inside my project so if there is a way to do this, that would resolve my issue as well.

Thanks

[sbannigan]

As of beta 14, you should be able to do something like this:

{
  "appId": "my.sample.app",
  "appName": "my-sample",
  "bundledWebRuntime": false,
  "rootDir": "apps"
  "webDir": "../dist/apps/web"
}

By setting the rootDir all the platform directories will be in that directory. The webDir is then relative to the rootDir.

[DmitryEfimenko]

each time I try to run npx cap add android after setting rootDir it does not get past the “Installing android dependencies” step.

However, if I (1) run npx cap add android with default settings so that it installs deps, (2) undo that step by manually deleting generated files except for the deps, (3) update the rootDir like shown above and (4) run npx cap add android again, it will skip the failing step and succeed.

Super annoying