compose: Error when using docker-compose exec command after updating to Docker Desktop 2.2.0.0 on macOS

I had the same error message as @yeclense and after looking at my .env file thanks to @Ovsyanka I discovered I had env variables without their values set that were also missing the = at the end

TEST

vs

TEST=

Adding = or removing the variables solved the problem for me.

Thanks!

https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/tag/1.25.4-rc2 Should include the fix.

Hi, quite useful feedbacks the last ones. @Ovsyanka I removed that new line, or at least reformatted that to not show that empty line, but still got same result.

@hrayr-artunyan your message made me search in our project and yes, we have a .env file in the root folder of the repo where the docker-compose is launched (it consist on a bunch of repos). This file is totally unrelated to docker-compose but to the config of the project itself (it sets the Symfony environment to work with)

So after removing this file or setting there a = at the end of the string value, docker-compose exec runs properly without errors.

I would say that there should be some kind of checking on this so that we can still work as we where doing before the last update, which means not forcing to have a specific format on this .env on the path where docker-compose is run, or at least, ignore whatever wrong format is set in there (instead of just fail)> But not on me to decide.

Thanks guys for the help!

It seems like I’ve found what caused the error in my case. It was the \ symbol at the end of the .env file. I put it there by mistake.

@ulyssessouza I assume that it would be nice if the user would get clear message about such type of errors in the .env file. It took a lot of time to figure out what cause a problem =(

@yeclense you didn’t provide your .env file. Don’t you have one? If you do - could you check it for a similar mistake? And I noticed something odd in your .yml. What is that new line in the VIRTUAL_HOST value?

   vr-nginx:
    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: 'some.list.of.subdomains.com

        '

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/docker-compose", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('docker-compose==1.25.0', 'console_scripts', 'docker-compose')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/main.py", line 72, in main
    command()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/main.py", line 125, in perform_command
    project = project_from_options('.', options)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/command.py", line 53, in project_from_options
    return get_project(
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/command.py", line 156, in get_project
    execution_context_labels(config_details, environment_file),
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/command.py", line 163, in execution_context_labels
    '{0}={1}'.format(LABEL_CONFIG_FILES, config_files_label(config_details)),
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/command.py", line 172, in config_files_label
    return ",".join(
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/compose/cli/command.py", line 173, in <genexpr>
    map(str, (os.path.normpath(c.filename) for c in config_details.config_files)))
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/posixpath.py", line 336, in normpath
    path = os.fspath(path)
TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType

The issue is closed but I’m leaving this comment in case someone ends up with the same issue like me.

On my case I had a colon (don’t ask me how) instead of a equal sign in my .env for one of the variables:

ENV:value, so I just updated to ENV=value and everything was working again.

We face the same issue and, although having values for the keys fixes the issue, there is one scenario that has not been covered: passing environment variables that are already set from the host to a container.

For this scenario, let’s have the following .env file:

MESSAGE

Running the command below will pass the value of the environment variable from the host to the container.

MESSAGE="HELLO, WORLD" docker run --rm --env-file .env alpine sh -c 'echo ${MESSAGE}'

This scenario is very useful for CI/CD server where the environment variables are set and we can provide a .env file with keys-only.

Before the latest version of Compose, passing .env file worked perfectly. Environment variables inside the docker-compose.yml could also be passed the same way.

services:
  alpine:
    image: alpine
    env_file: .env
    environment:
      - MESSAGE_2=${MESSAGE}

Now, this fails because for some reasons, Compose does not accept keys-only .env file anymore.

Passing a different file like env_file: .env.local with keys-only to a container works without problem. However, MESSAGE_2=${MESSAGE} does not work because .env has key without value. This use case worked before.

Is this an intended breaking change? or simply a bug?

I had the same error message as @yeclense and after looking at my .env file thanks to @Ovsyanka I discovered I had env variables without their values set that were also missing the = at the end

TEST

vs

TEST=

Adding = or removing the variables solved the problem for me.

Thanks!

Had the same error on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with:

• Docker version 19.03.11, build 42e35e61f3
• docker-compose version 1.25.0, build 0a186604
• Python 3.8.2

The problem was a missing = on .env file.

I’ve quickly tested the Compose version 1.25.4-rc2 and it works the same way as before. i.e: a key-only .env file passes the values of environment variables to the container.

Well done, @ulyssessouza !

I have same use-case as @flemay , we use “key-only” env files heavily to define sets of variables which should be included from host env to containers with like 40 keys where. really helps for local development setups. this case is broken now, will it work same if we just provide KEY= in all of them? huge backwards-compatibility issue =(

and it only breaks on exec and run, rest of the commands work just fine…

UPD: it does not work the same if we prodive KEY=, -> exec and run work, but actual values gathered by docker-compose to be set in container’s environment are not overriden by ones from .env or host

I’ve just tried in another macbook with same versions and same projects and I cannot reproduce it. In the failing one (work laptop) I get the same error on different projects with different docker-compose.yml files.

I won’t share any private project compose files here due to sensitive data, but I’ll try to find a public one where I can reproduce the error.

It throws a different error on different file/line, so I decided to open a new issue.