Running "pub deps" unexpectedly modifies .dart_tool/package_config.json (when there are path dependencies)

[DanTup]

This came up at #2896 (comment).

In VS Code, I'm using pub deps to render the dependencies tree. If the package_config.json file is modified, that triggers a refresh of the tree. This results in calling pub deps again. For some projects, I found that the act of calling pub deps modified the file, which triggered calling it again (and this went on forever).

Attaching a debugger to pub showed it occurring here, because hasPathDependencies=true:

pub/lib/src/entrypoint.dart

Lines 512 to 520 in c33f264

	if (packageConfigModified.isBefore(lockFileModified) ||
	hasPathDependencies) {
	// If `package_config.json` is newer than `pubspec.lock` or we have
	// path dependencies, then we check that `package_config.json` is a
	// correct configuration on the local machine. This aims to:
	// * Mitigate issues when copying a folder from one machine to another.
	// * Force `pub get` if a path dependency has changed language verison.
	_checkPackageConfigUpToDate();
	touch(packageConfigFile);

@jonasfj

[jonasfj]

Hmm, yeah, maybe it's overkill to touch it just because it has a path dependency..

[jonasfj]

Probably there is no need to do any timestamping if there is a path dependency...

[sigurdm]

@jonasfj thinks we can touch it only in the first case (packageConfigModified.isBefore(lockFileModified)) not the second (hasPathDependencies)