Problem with unnecessary comment_body field

[stpaultim]

Description of the bug

Not entirely sure if this is a bug or not. But, I've been testing config management to deploy a site and working through a number of issues. The one outstanding issue that I run into is this error.

The field instance "Comment" cannot be created because the field type "comment_body" does not exist.

The comment module is disabled on both the source and destination sites and we are not using comments on this site.

1. How did these config files get generated and why are they still here causing trouble?

NOTE: In testing config recipes I created a new content type and noticed that for each node type, a comment body config file was generated, even if comments are disabled. Is it possible to either:

a) avoid making these config files if they are not needed.
b) figure out how to bypass this problem during config import.

[stpaultim]

@klonos - Did you say that the patch for #5163 (using config to enable modules) might actually resolve this issue?

[klonos]

The comment module is disabled on both the source and destination sites and we are not using comments on this site.

How did these config files get generated and why are they still here causing trouble?

You say "disabled" @stpaultim ...can you please confirm that the module is also uninstalled on the source site? Uninstalling the module should have removed any config that it might have left behind in the source site. If not, then we need to work on that.

In testing config recipes I created a new content type and noticed that for each node type, a comment body config file was generated, even if comments are disabled.

That sounds wrong to me. We should fix it ^^

@klonos - Did you say that the patch for #5163 (using config to enable modules) might actually resolve this issue?

Not exactly. What #5163 would help with is that if the Comment module was enabled on the source site, but disabled on the destination site, then it would enable it for you. The scenario you are describing here is different though:

• the Comment module seems to not be fully uninstalled in the source site (I could be wrong about this - please confirm)
• there is comment-related config in the source site, which is included in the config export

I think that we might have another idea here that we need to consider/explore with re to improving config management: On the source site, do not include configuration that we know for sure that it belongs to modules that have been disabled/uninstalled. Is that risky though? 🤷🏼 (I think so)