What happened?

patchesStrategicMerge was used for include a code that declare $path:delete in patches for rewrite output from bases and granually including some structure per environment (after initial declaration in bases)

After Kustomize version was upgraded kustomize from 4.5.x to 5.3.0 and upgrading to patches from patchesStrategicMerge it cause an error in a files multiple patches with $patch:delete

What did you expect to happen?

Running the command "kustomize build ./overlay/test" shows resources that have not been disabled for overlays.

How can we reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible)?

Run this in terminal or with a bash file and check output with patches and patchesStrategicMerge

mkdir -p kustomize-test/base
mkdir -p kustomize-test/overlay/dev
mkdir -p kustomize-test/overlay/test

cat <<EOF> kustomize-test/base/kustomization.yaml
resources:
- workflow.yaml
EOF

cat <<EOF> kustomize-test/base/workflow.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix1
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: worker
        image: worker:1.14.2
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix2
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: worker
        image: worker:1.14.2
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix3
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: worker
        image: worker:1.14.2
EOF

cat <<EOF> kustomize-test/overlay/test/workflow-patch.yaml
\$patch: delete
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix1
---
\$patch: delete
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix2
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: workflow-suffix3
EOF

cat <<EOF> kustomize-test/overlay/test/kustomization.yaml
resources:
  - ../../base

patches: # instead of patchesStrategicMerge
  - path: workflow-patch.yaml

# patchesStrategicMerge:
#   - workflow-patch.yaml
EOF

kustomize build kustomize-test/overlay/test

Expected output

a proper output with workflow-suffix3 deployment declaration

Actual output

panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x40 pc=0x9902cb]

goroutine 1 [running]:
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml.(*RNode).Content(...)
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml/rnode.go:707
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml.(*RNode).getMapFieldValue(0x14002260b08?, {0x10476bfb1?, 0x7?})
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml/rnode.go:420 +0x54
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml.(*RNode).GetApiVersion(...)
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/yaml/rnode.go:402
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/resid.GvkFromNode(0x140017648b8?)
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/resid/gvk.go:32 +0x40
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api/resource.(*Resource).GetGvk(...)
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api/resource/resource.go:57
sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/api/resource.(*Resource).CurId(0x1400044e960)

Kustomize version

kustomize 5.3.0

Operating system

Linux