Magento 2 developer mode doesn't regenerate static files automatically

Question

I have a Magento 2.0.2 installation in developer mode and I still can't figure out how to force it to regenerate the static view files whenever I make a change in my CSS.

I verified that I am in developer mode by running php bin/magento deploy:mode:show

On this page it says that developer mode disables static view files caching, but that is not the case for me.

I tried to edit the di.xml as mentionned in this solution but it didn't change Magento's behavior.

How can I tell magento to automatically regenerate static view files?

Answer 1

In developer mode, M2 does not generate static files. It should create symlinks to them from the various modules. If you however have ran setup:static-content:deploy and have those files in place, it won't update them. Try removing all static files and see if Magento links to them (be careful not to remove the actual files if you have symlinks)

Answer 2

Same happened to me. After moving the site to another server, it turned out I didn't set the file permissions correct.

I ran find . -type d -exec chmod 770 {} \; && find . -type f -exec chmod 660 {} \; && chmod u+x bin/magento and that solved my problem.

More info: Magento 2: Recommended File Permission for shared hosting

Update: make sure the pub folder (magento/pub) and the underlying folders have read and write permissions.

Answer 3

I was facing the same issue with my less updates noting showing unless I flushed my static files. The fix for me was to disable mod_expires. This was caching the css and etc.

Inside of the pub/static/.htaccess file you will should have something like the following:

<IfModule mod_expires.c>

############################################
## Add default Expires header
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires

    ExpiresActive On

    # Data
    <FilesMatch \.(zip|gz|gzip|bz2|csv|xml)$>
        ExpiresDefault "access plus 0 seconds"
    </FilesMatch>
    ExpiresByType text/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
    ExpiresByType text/csv "access plus 0 seconds"
    ExpiresByType application/json "access plus 0 seconds"
    ExpiresByType application/zip "access plus 0 seconds"
    ExpiresByType application/x-gzip "access plus 0 seconds"
    ExpiresByType application/x-bzip2 "access plus 0 seconds"

    # CSS, JavaScript, html
    <FilesMatch \.(css|js|html|json)$>
        ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
    </FilesMatch>
    ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/json "access plus 1 year"

    # Favicon, images, flash
    <FilesMatch \.(ico|gif|png|jpg|jpeg|swf|svg)$>
        ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
    </FilesMatch>
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 year"

    # Fonts
    <FilesMatch \.(eot|ttf|otf|svg|woff|woff2)$>
        ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
    </FilesMatch>
    ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/x-font-otf "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType application/font-woff2 "access plus 1 year"

</IfModule>

By disabling mod_expires or commenting out the above and doing a hard refresh in your browser (Mac Users hold down Shift + Command + r) your changes should start showing each time you make them.

Answer 4

I was experiencing the same issue. I had developer mode enabled for some time, then for some reason (likely an error on my part at some point), it no longer seemed to work.

Simple solution for me was to reset the mode to developer again:

php bin/magento deploy:mode:set developer

NB: You might need to set it to default and then developer.

Answer 5

I just had this issue too!

It turns out in my case it was a permission issue.

cat /etc/apache2/logs/error_log | grep static

and

tail -f /etc/apache2/logs/error_log | grep static

gave me interesting info (maybe your log file might be named differently)

first I saw:

[Wed Oct 30 12:19:34.287356 2019] [core:crit] [pid 27633] (13)Permission denied: [client 24.48.87.7:16680] AH00529: /home/[datuser]/public_html/pub/static/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable and that '/home/[datuser]/public_html/pub/static/' is executable

it turned out my pub/static folder was not executable. Then after fixing that I got

[Wed Oct 30 12:22:46.490759 2019] [:error] [pid 27290] [client ipremoved] SoftException in Application.cpp:267: File "/home/[datuser]/public_html/pub/static.php" is writeable by group, referer: [url removed]
[Wed Oct 30 12:22:46.490961 2019] [core:error] [pid 27290] [client ipremoved] End of script output before headers: static.php, referer: [url removed]

On our server apache cant serve files that are writable by group for some reason, some Cpanel security stuff I believe. So I had to set 644 on all files under pub and finally my symlinks started to get created!!