manifest-generate-paths annotation is ignored, causing unnecessary manifest generation - Reopened

[deynekas]

Checklist:

• I've searched in the docs and FAQ for my answer: https://bit.ly/argocd-faq.
• I've included steps to reproduce the bug.
• I've pasted the output of argocd version.

Describe the bug

After upgrading Argo CD from 3.1.0 to 3.4.2, we started experiencing performance issues with the repo-server whenever a commit is made to our mono-repo containing applications. The spikes Seems to be caused by cache invalidation, which forces manifest generation for all applications on every commit despite that fact that on each application we use manifest-generate-paths annotation.

In our setup, we use a mono-repo that contains both application definitions and their Helm charts. We rely on the manifest-generate-paths annotation to avoid unnecessary manifest generations when a commit does not affect files related to a given application, as described here.

We already reported this issue after upgrading to 3.3.6 and is supposed to be fixed in 3.4.2 but after doing upgrade the performance issue is still present.

To Reproduce

ApplicationSet defintion

apiVersion: argoproj.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationSet
metadata:
  name: dashboard
spec:
  generators:
  - clusters: {selector: {matchExpressions: [{key: "application", operator: "In", values: ["my-app"]}]}}
  template:
    metadata:
      name: '{{name}}-dashboard'
      annotations:
        argocd.argoproj.io/manifest-generate-paths: .;../../config
    spec:
      project: my-project
      source:
        repoURL: https://github.com/myorg/monorepo.git
        targetRevision: HEAD
        path: 'apps/dashboard'
        plugin:
          name: global-config-cmp-v0.1.0
      destination:
        name: '{{name}}'
        namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
      syncPolicy:
        syncOptions:
        - CreateNamespace=true
  syncPolicy:
    preserveResourcesOnDeletion: false

Expected behavior
manifest-generate-paths is taken into account for applications containing it

Version

argocd-server: v3.4.2
  BuildDate: 2026-05-12T20:34:57Z
  GitCommit: 0dc6b1b57dd5bb925d5b03c3d09419ab9fb4225e
  GitTreeState: clean
  GitTag: v3.4.2
  GoVersion: go1.26.0
  Compiler: gc
  Platform: linux/amd64
  Kustomize Version: v5.8.1 2026-02-09T16:15:27Z
  Helm Version: v3.19.4+g7cfb6e4
  Kubectl Version: v0.34.0
  Jsonnet Version: v0.21.0

[mycodeself]

We are also seeing this issue, where ArgoCD is creating revisions in apps when changes are made to other applications outside it path, even using argocd.argoproj.io/manifest-generate-paths: .

[fm1ck3y]

Hi @mycodeself @deynekas
Could you please let me know if you use the depth parameter to optimize your repositories?
I see that logic will skip getting manifests from cache if depth is defined and not equal 0.
https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/blob/master/controller/state.go#L459