application.css shows the mainfest file code along with the included files

[Braunson]

For some odd reason all of a sudden the outputted application.css file starts with the mainfest comments and then followed by the included css.

e.g.

/**
 * This is a manifest file that'll be compiled into application.css, which will include all the files
 * listed below.
 *
 * Any Css/Less files within this directory, lib/assets/javascripts, vendor/assets/javascripts,
 * can be referenced here using a relative path.
 *
 * It's not advisable to add code directly here, but if you do, it'll appear in whatever order it 
 * gets included (e.g. say you have require_tree . then the code will appear after all the directories 
 * but before any files alphabetically greater than 'application.css' 
 *
 * //= require_tree .
 *
 *= require_tree .
 *= require_tree ./bootstrap
 *= require_tree ./theme
 *= require_tree ./vendor
 */
then the css of the items here.

[Braunson]

This turned out to be a weird cache/concat issue. After composer update and composer dump-autoload. It wouldn't parse at all, then I turned concat off and it all worked.

So I went to /public and found an assets folder, renamed/removed that and refreshed and everything is working (with concat enabled too)