[3.0] Document two ways working code looks broken to an agent - #9670
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Sesquipedalian merged 1 commit intoSep 10, 2026
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Both of these produced a confident, wrong conclusion recently, and neither
leaves any trace that the reading was unsafe.
A grep does not prove something is dead, because SMF reaches functions,
sub-templates and CSS classes under names it assembles at runtime.
Theme::loadSubTemplate('init') calls template_init(), and searching for
template_init finds only a comment.
On Windows the bind mount into the web container propagates an edit after a
lag, and until it does the container serves the old file with nothing to say
so. A page requested straight after an edit can show the previous behaviour,
which reads as the edit having no effect.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Signed-off-by: albertlast <mathiaspapealbert@hotmail.com>
Sesquipedalian
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Sep 10, 2026
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Description
Two traps in this repository and its dev environment produce a confident wrong conclusion rather than an obviously wrong one, and neither leaves any sign that the reading was unsafe. Both cost me a full investigation into a bug that did not exist, so they seem worth writing down where the next agent will read them.
A grep does not prove something is dead
SMF reaches functions, sub-templates and CSS classes under names it assembles at runtime, so the literal never appears in the source:
Theme::loadSubTemplate('init')callstemplate_init()— this is how every theme initialises itself.Theme::loadTemplate($name)callstemplate_{$name}_init().BBCodeParserbuilds.bbc_standard_quoteas'bbc_' . ($quote_alt ? 'alternate' : 'standard') . '_quote'.Grep for
template_initand you get a single comment. That reads exactly like proof of dead code, and I acted on it: I had a branch open to "fix" the fact thattemplate_init()is never called, and the wholetemplate_init()block —has_dark_mode,theme_variants,page_index— was inert. It is not.loadSubTemplate('init', 'ignore')at the end ofloadTemplatesAndLangFiles()calls it on every request, and dark mode works.Added to Things that bite in this codebase.
The Windows bind mount serves stale files
### Running the forumcurrently says the checkout is bind-mounted "so edits are live with no rebuild", which is true but reads as immediate. On Docker Desktop for Windows it is not: a changed file reaches the container after a lag of seconds, sometimes longer, and until it does the container serves the previous version silently.So a page requested straight after an edit can show the old behaviour — indistinguishable from the edit not working. In one session it made the above look like a real bug, and later made a
git stashappear never to have been applied.The note says to poll until the change actually appears before measuring, and records that neither the SMF cache nor opcache is the cause, since those are the first two things you would check and both are dead ends:
$cache_enableis 0 (as.docker/use-engine.shalso notes) and opcache runs withrevalidate_freq = 0.Added to Running the forum.
Notes
Documentation only — no code changes.
Both #9617 and #9659 also touch
AGENTS.md, in other sections. Whichever lands first, I will rebase the others.Issues References (Fixes|Related|Closes)
None.
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