Why won't it kustomize the node already visited - yaml

Question

I am using kubectl kustomizecommands to deploy multiple applications (parsers and receivers) with similar configurations and I'm having problems with the hierarchy of kustomization.yaml files (not understanding what's possible and what's not).
I run the kustomize command as follows from custom directory:
$ kubectl kustomize overlay/pipeline/parsers/commercial/dev - this works fine, it produces expected output defined in the kustomization.yaml #1 as desired. What's not working is that it does NOT automatically execute the #2 kustomization, which is in the (already traversed) directory path 2 levels above. The #2 kustomization.yaml contains configMap creation that's common to all of the parser environments. I don't want to repeat those in every env. When I tried to refer to #1 from #2 I got an error about circular reference, yet it fails to run the config creation.
I have the following directory structure tree:
custom
├── base
| ├── kustomization.yaml
│ ├── logstash-config.yaml
│ └── successful-vanilla-ls7.8.yaml
├── install_notes.txt
├── overlay
│   └── pipeline
│   ├── logstash-config.yaml
│   ├── parsers
│   │   ├── commercial
│   │   │   ├── dev
│   │   │   │   ├── dev-patches.yaml
│   │   │   │   ├── kustomization.yaml <====== #1 this works
│   │   │   │   ├── logstash-config.yaml
│   │   │   │   └── parser-config.yaml
│   │   │   ├── prod
│   │   │   ├── stage
│   │   ├── kustomization.yaml <============= #2 why won't this run automatically?
│   │   ├── logstash-config.yaml
│   │   ├── parser-config.yaml
│
Here is my #1 kustomization.yaml:
bases:
- ../../../../../base
namePrefix: dev-
commonLabels:
app: "ls-7.8-logstash"
chart: "logstash"
heritage: "Helm"
release: "ls-7.8"
patchesStrategicMerge:
- dev-patches.yaml
And here is my #2 kustomization.yaml file:
apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
configMapGenerator:
# generate a ConfigMap named my-generated-configmap-<some-hash> where each file
# in the list appears as a data entry (keyed by base filename).
- name: logstashpipeline-parser
behavior: create
files:
- parser-config.yaml
- name: logstashconfig
behavior: create
files:
- logstash-config.yaml

Answer 1

The issue lays within your structure. Each entry in base should resolve to a directory containing one kustomization.yaml file. The same goes with overlay. Now, I think it would be easier to explain on an example (I will use $ to show what goes where):
├── base $1
│ ├── deployment.yaml
│ ├── kustomization.yaml $1
│ └── service.yaml
└── overlays
├── dev $2
│ ├── kustomization.yaml $2
│ └── patch.yaml
├── prod #3
│ ├── kustomization.yaml $3
│ └── patch.yaml
└── staging #4
├── kustomization.yaml $4
└── patch.yaml
Every entry resolves to it's corresponding kustomization.yaml file. Base $1 resolves to kustomization.yaml $1, dev $2 to kustomization.yaml $2 and so on.
However in your use case:
├── base $1
| ├── kustomization.yaml $1
│ ├── logstash-config.yaml
│ └── successful-vanilla-ls7.8.yaml
├── install_notes.txt
├── overlay
│ └── pipeline
│ ├── logstash-config.yaml
│ ├── parsers
│ │ ├── commercial
│ │ │ ├── dev $2
│ │ │ │ ├── dev-patches.yaml
│ │ │ │ ├── kustomization.yaml $2
│ │ │ │ ├── logstash-config.yaml
│ │ │ │ └── parser-config.yaml
│ │ │ ├── prod $3
│ │ │ ├── stage $4
│ │ ├── kustomization.yaml $???
│ │ ├── logstash-config.yaml
│ │ ├── parser-config.yaml
│
Nothing resolves to your second kustomization.yaml.
So to make it work you should put those files separately under each environment.
Below you can find sources with some more examples showing how the tipical directory structure should look like:
Components
Directory layout
GitHub