Module dependencies are not respected when default configuration is imported

If this is truly a major bug, why is nothing breaking?

Some of these issues are surfacing in #1808248: Add a separate module install/uninstall step to the config import process. A specific example of this can be recreated by trying to do a config import of the standard profiles YAML files over the top of a minimal installation.

One example of this is -
The minimal profile does not ship with a 'administrator' role, but standard does.

the config export from standard includes the following files -

action.action.user_remove_role_action.administrator.yml
action.action.user_add_role_action.administrator.yml
user.role.administrator.yml

The config will also be imported in the above order. When we come to import the administrator role, an insert hook is fired on role creation - user_user_role_insert(), which goes and again creates the 2 actions (which have already just been imported).

Additionally, after the full config import has run, action.action.user_remove_role_action.administrator and action.action.user_add_role_action.administrator still show up on the config import UI as having changes that need to be synced, because the UUIDs still differ between the staging and active directories.

When I try to import standard profiles YAML files over the top of a minimal installation, I get the following error message: "Drupal\Component\Plugin\Exception\PluginException: The plugin (comment_publish_action) did not specify an instance class. in Drupal\Component\Plugin\Factory\DefaultFactory::getPluginClass() (line 62 of /Users/mtift/Sites/d83/core/lib/Drupal/Component/Plugin/Factory/DefaultFactory.php)"

That's not a supported operation though, you could never reuse parts of an install profile over another installation.

Now that we require full config imports, isn't this won't fix? Because the full config would have the modules required.

This this issue is about module dependencies, I posted a follow-up comment regarding install profiles in #2029771-1: Having installation profiles in system.module.yml causes config import to fail

It would seem that the OP regarding order of module dependencies is still up for debate, and that we need a better alternative to importing alphabetically. Or is this issue solved by full config imports?

Related: #1944368: React to / force order of imports

Add related issue

Duplicate of #2080823: Create API to discover config entities' soft dependencies and use this to present a confirm form on module uninstall - and the current patch actually fixes this.