doctrine/orm · error · InvalidArgumentException

Proxies destination directory '<info>%s</info>' does not hav

Error message

Proxies destination directory '<info>%s</info>' does not have write permissions.

What it means

The last filesystem gate in orm:generate-proxies: the resolved destination directory must be writable because the command writes the generated proxy class files into it. When is_writable($destPath) is false — wrong owner, read-only filesystem — it throws InvalidArgumentException('...does not have write permissions').

Source

Thrown at src/Tools/Console/Command/GenerateProxiesCommand.php:83

            if ($destPath === null) {
                throw new InvalidArgumentException('Proxy directory cannot be null');
            }
        }

        if (! is_dir($destPath)) {
            mkdir($destPath, 0775, true);
        }

        $destPath = realpath($destPath);

        if (! file_exists($destPath)) {
            throw new InvalidArgumentException(
                sprintf("Proxies destination directory '<info>%s</info>' does not exist.", $em->getConfiguration()->getProxyDir()),
            );
        }

        if (! is_writable($destPath)) {
            throw new InvalidArgumentException(
                sprintf("Proxies destination directory '<info>%s</info>' does not have write permissions.", $destPath),
            );
        }

        if (empty($metadatas)) {
            $ui->success('No Metadata Classes to process.');

            return 0;
        }

        foreach ($metadatas as $metadata) {
            $ui->text(sprintf('Processing entity "<info>%s</info>"', $metadata->name));
        }

        // Generating Proxies
        $em->getProxyFactory()->generateProxyClasses($metadatas, $destPath);

        // Outputting information message

View on GitHub (pinned to d9b9ff7301)

Solutions

1. Fix ownership and mode: chown -R <user>: var/cache/... and chmod -R u+w (or run the command as the directory owner).
2. Point proxy_dir at a path guaranteed writable by the CLI user (e.g. under var/cache or artifacts baked into the image).
3. On read-only-filesystem deployments, generate proxies at build time instead of deploy time.

Example fix

# before
$ php bin/console orm:generate-proxies
# InvalidArgumentException: ... does not have write permissions.

# after
$ sudo chown -R $(whoami): var/cache/prod/doctrine/orm/Proxies
$ chmod -R u+w var/cache/prod/doctrine/orm/Proxies
$ php bin/console orm:generate-proxies

$dir = $em->getConfiguration()->getProxyDir();
if ($dir !== null && ! is_writable($dir)) {
    throw new RuntimeException('Proxy directory ' . $dir . ' is not writable by user ' . get_current_user());
}
// run orm:generate-proxies

When it happens

Trigger: The proxy directory is owned by a different user than the one running the command (root-created var/ during image build, deploy user runs CLI); read-only or immutable filesystems; directories created by php-fpm with restrictive modes; group write missing on shared setups.

Common situations: Deploy pipelines switching users between build and release steps; Docker volumes with wrong ownership; shared hosting where the web server user owns cache directories.

Related errors

• Proxies destination directory '<info>%s</info>' does not exi
• Proxy directory cannot be null
• The directory "%s" does not exist and could not be created.
• The directory "%s" is not writable.
• No second-level cache is configured on the given EntityManag

AI-assisted analysis of doctrine/orm@d9b9ff7301 (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c3ef4b92999cd9a3. Report an issue: GitHub.