Laravel throws 'The bootstrap/cache directory

Question

I used 'composer update', which updated a few packages. During the updating process the website still functions. However, after it says 'The compiled services file has been removed', the website doesn't load and instead says:

Exception in ProviderRepository.php line 190:
The bootstrap/cache directory must be present and writable.

The weirdest thing is, when I run 'composer update' again, the website starts to work again, until the compiled services file is removed, at which point it throws the same error again. I have already tried the usual things that should be done when this error appears (chown -R everything to the right user/group and chmod all the files and folders 664 and 775 respectively).

I don't know what to do anymore, as the error doesn't seem 'correct'..

Answer 1

Try this too after you have run the composer update:

php artisan config:clear

Answer 2

If a web server (e.g. Apache or Nginx) is being used as a front-end the solution is to make the directory bootstrap/cache owned by web server group. For Nginx:

 $ sudo chgrp -R nginx bootstrap/cache

Answer 3

Short version: If uploading using something like AWS eb cli Verify if bootstrap/cache folder (not talking about its contents) is being deployed.

Some background behind my answer

I am using Amazon Web Services' Elastic Beanstalk to host my Laravel project. As I just started using Laravel I do not have much idea about its functioning. Two days back My new deployments were all crashing midway with OP's error message.

Earlier that day, I realised that I was not using

 php artisan config:cache

to cache configurations to make things faster. And I added the same in composer.json's "post-install-cmd" and "post-update-cmd" clauses.
And I also added statement in .ebignore file to not upload the content of /bootstrap/cache (as its content is environment dependent a.k.a my localhost configurations have no meaning on my production server)

And facepalm I did not realise that this will stop the bootstrap/cache folder from being uploaded (as Like git, eb cli ignores empty folders).
So, when I started to deploy at night The deployments were meant to crash.

So, now I have just placed empty-placeholder (say) .gitkeep file in bootstrap/cache. And deployments are working once again :)
(Though the problem was so simple I realised the reason after ssh-ing and digging an EBS EC2 instance for some sweet sleep hours ~.~ )

Answer 4

Try executing the following commands in your project root directory

composer update

then do

composer dumpautoload

this will avoid the necessity of messing with cache files which may lead to whole new sort of issues