`route:cache` mutates live route instances, breaking subsequent `optimize` tasks that analyze routes

[hosni]

Laravel Version

13.19.0

PHP Version

8.4.23

Database Driver & Version

N/A (not database-related)

Description

RouteCacheCommand calls prepareForSerialization() directly on route instances returned from getFreshApplicationRoutes().

framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Console/RouteCacheCommand.php

Lines 56 to 64 in 3093ff3

	$routes = $this->getFreshApplicationRoutes();
	if (count($routes) === 0) {
	return $this->components->error("Your application doesn't have any routes.");
	}
	foreach ($routes as $route) {
	$route->prepareForSerialization();
	}

Route::prepareForSerialization() intentionally removes runtime dependencies:

framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php

Line 1560 in 3093ff3

unset($this->router, $this->container);

Those route objects remain referenced by the live router collection. Later in the same PHP process, any code that still needs to analyze routes can fail with:

LogicException: Route is not bound.

This happens because after container is unset.
Access like $route->container goes through __get():

framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php

Lines 1569 to 1573 in 3093ff3

	public function __get($key)
	{
	return $this->parameter($key);
	}
	}

which calls parameters():

framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php

Lines 432 to 435 in 3093ff3

	public function parameter($name, $default = null)
	{
	return Arr::get($this->parameters(), $name, $default);
	}

And that throws when the route was never bound to a request:

framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php

Lines 483 to 490 in 3093ff3

	public function parameters()
	{
	if (isset($this->parameters)) {
	return $this->parameters;
	}
	throw new LogicException('Route is not bound.');
	}

This is especially visible with php artisan optimize, which runs built-in cache commands before ServiceProvider::$optimizeCommands:

[
    'config' => 'config:cache',
    'events' => 'event:cache',
    'routes' => 'route:cache',
    'views' => 'view:cache',
    ...ServiceProvider::$optimizeCommands,
]

If a package registers an optimize task that analyzes routes (for example, to cache generated metadata), that task can fail after route:cache has already run in the same optimize command.

Steps To Reproduce

Reproduction repository: https://github.com/hosni-labs/laravel-optimize-command-bug

1. Clone the reproduction repository:

git clone https://github.com/hosni/laravel-optimize-command-bug.git
cd laravel-optimize-command-bug
composer install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

2. The app registers a custom optimize command via AppServiceProvider:

$this->optimizes(
    optimize: 'test:route-analysis',
    key: 'route-analysis',
);

3. The test:route-analysis command iterates all routes and analyzes them:

foreach (Route::getRoutes() as $route) {
    dump($route->uri(), $route->getController(), $route->gatherMiddleware());
}

4. Run the command directly — it succeeds:

php artisan test:route-analysis

5. Run it as part of optimize — it fails:

php artisan optimize

Expected: optimize completes successfully, including the route-analysis task.

Actual: The route-analysis task fails with:

LogicException: Route is not bound.

The failure occurs on any route when gatherMiddleware() is called after route:cache has already executed in the same process.

Workaround:

php artisan optimize --except=route-analysis
php artisan test:route-analysis

Proposed fix: Clone each route before calling prepareForSerialization(), and build the route cache file from the cloned/prepared collection so live route instances are not mutated.