Why does robots.txt not reflect the order of robots.json after daily dark visitors update

[glyn]

          Me too. Another small mystery is that `robots.txt` is still in the old order and the latest run didn't update it. I think that's a separate issue though!

Originally posted by @glyn in #44 (comment)

[glyn]

There was a failure to update robots.txt: https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/actions/runs/11413277042/job/31760570236

[glyn]

We are now at the mercy of PHP (rather than Python in the dark visitors processing).

I tried reading the PHP docs for json_decode and dictionaries in PHP, but didn't find anything about ordering.

I used an online runner and the behaviour of json_decode and foreach seemed to respect the ordering of the input JSON, but I guess that might depend on the version of PHP that our runner is using.

[glyn]

@newbold Any thoughts on this issue, please?

[glyn]

I reran the failed job just to be on the safe side, but it made no difference: robots.txt was not updated.

[glyn]

I added some diagnostics and it seems that the output robots.txt is in the correct order, but the result of a rerun does not get picked up as a git change. So the issue may be more to do with the github actions than with the PHP code itself.