This is pretty strange. I have an Angular directive that is part of an ng-repeat, and there are no elements in the ng-repeat's source array until a specific action is performed by the user.
Once that action is performed, the array is populated correctly and the element is added to the DOM -- but doesn't actually render. On literally any DOM change -- altering any CSS property of any element on the pages, resizing the page, anything -- the element appears as expected.
Not sure what code would actually be useful to help diagnose this problem, but I'm happy to provide anything relevant.
Other relevant information: Works as expected in Safari, using Ionic framework.
It's not enough that the user perform an action, Angular must find out that the user has done so. You are supposed to inform it by calling $digest() but as that can fail if you are already in a digest call, I just call $timeout().