Allow config-import to be skipped when config is empty

[grasmash]

Currently, if you try to execute drush config-import and the config directory is empty, you will receive an error like this:

Drupal\Core\Config\ConfigImporterException: There were errors        [error]
validating the config synchronization. in
Drupal\Core\Config\ConfigImporter->validate() (line 728 of
/home/travis/build/acquia/blt-project/docroot/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Config/ConfigImporter.php).
The import failed due for the following reasons:                     [error]
This import is empty and if applied would delete all of your
configuration, so has been rejected.

At first, I tried to workaround this by checking to see if the config directory was empty prior to import. However, if you're using something like config_split, your config directory may change depending on environment. It's not easy (from the CLI) to know which directory to check. This makes it difficult to create a good CI build.

So, I propose adding a --skip-if-empty option to drush config-import that will skip configuration import without failure if the config directory is empty.

[bircher]

I am not per-se against it, but I am also not sure how this can happen without being an error of some sort.
Config Split allows you to fragment/segment/split the one config directory into smaller ones and lets you decide which ones to include. But you will always need to have a canonical sync directory where you have your core.extension.yml and possibly some other core and system config. Config Split is not meant to completely replace a configuration directory as you could have done that before already with several directories specified in $config_directories. Config Sync only works with the default by default. you can make it work with every config storage, however.

So an empty config directory seems to be an error. If a split directory is empty it will just simply not add anything to the sync directory when importing and you wouldn't get the failure you are getting.

[balaji1006]

I have tried to execute drush config-import, it will get the same error.

[error] Drupal\Core\Config\ConfigImporterException: There were errors validating the config synchronization. in Drupal\Core\Config\ConfigImporter->validate() (line 728 of /home/local/RAGE/balajir/projects/drupal/cdstdev/drupal/docroot/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Config/ConfigImporter.php).
[error] The import failed due to the following reasons:
This import is empty and if applied would delete all of your configurations, so has been rejected.

Please provide the any solution

[davereid-pfg]

I could also use this. We have our own internal version of drupal-project that uses the drush deploy command. For testing our project, our config directory is naturally empty, just like drupal-project, but now the deploy command fails since it doesn't exist.

[djdevin]

+1, empty config directory because all configuration is deployed via code. Would be nice to still use drush deploy

[weitzman]

because all configuration is deployed via code

Are the config files not in your repo? That would be a non-standard workflow. You can't easily stage/test configuration changes.

Is that true for other people in this issue? I'm not really understanding the reasoning behind this request.

[davereid-pfg]

We are definitely encountering web teams that lack active developers, that do not want to manage their config via code, and want to only rely on the active config in the database. It would be nice if our tooling that uses drush deploy could work for those sites as well.

[weitzman]

I'm ambivalent. Any thoughts, @alexpott or @bircher?

[alexpott]

I think the deploy command could have a skip config import option. But I think calling config import and the directory being empty should always fail.

[weitzman]

Thanks @alexpott. Your suggestion makes sense. Yet I looked into implementation, and nothing makes more sense to me than folks just using this 3 line custom script:

drush udpatedb
drush cr
drush deploy:hook