setup-msys2: Environment variables in $GITHUB_ENV ignored for PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH

I’m using $GITHUB_ENV to modify environment variables. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

In my CI yaml file, I have this:

    - name: Setup paths and env
      run: |
        mkdir -p $HOME/.local/bin
        mkdir -p $HOME/.local/lib/pkgconfig
        echo "PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "ANT_HOME=foo" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "ANT_HOME2=bar" >> $GITHUB_ENV

And later on in the same ci, I have this:

    - name: Display information about build environment
      continue-on-error: true
      run: |
        env
        g++ --version
        clang++ --version
        pkg-config --version
        m4 --version

The first one should put some new variables into $GITHUB_ENV. Those variable then become part of the execution environment for the second one. We can see that it somewhat works. Here’s the log of the CI run:

2020-12-25T16:24:59.5787589Z ##[group]Run env
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788080Z [36;1menv[0m
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788444Z [36;1mg++ --version[0m
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788831Z [36;1mclang++ --version[0m
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5789451Z [36;1mpkg-config --version[0m
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5789887Z [36;1mm4 --version[0m
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5792315Z shell: D:\a\_temp\msys\msys2.CMD {0}
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5792732Z env:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5793218Z   MSYSTEM: MINGW64
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5793969Z   PKG_CONFIG_PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/share/pkgconfig
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5794828Z   LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/lib:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5796094Z   PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/bin:/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5797320Z   ANT_HOME: foo
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5797714Z   ANT_HOME2: bar
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5798095Z   NUM_CPUS: 8
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5798458Z ##[endgroup]
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9898476Z USERDOMAIN=fv-az177-439
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9899859Z OS=Windows_NT
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9901764Z LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/runneradmin/.local/lib:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9904727Z COMMONPROGRAMFILES=C:\Program Files\Common Files
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9919605Z PROCESSOR_LEVEL=6
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9921928Z PSModulePath=C:\Modules\azurerm_2.1.0;C:\Modules\azure_2.1.0;C:\Users\packer\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Tools\PowerShell\Modules\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Cloud SDK\google-cloud-sdk\platform\PowerShell
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0211451Z ANT_HOME2=bar
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0265443Z ANT_HOME=foo
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0272362Z PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/share/pkgconfig
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0267298Z PATH=/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl

(I didn’t include all the lines in the above log to keep it brief. Full log here.)

Notice how the environment for this command includes setting variables like MSYSTEM, PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and others in the very first lines. And then when we view the results of env, some of those were set into the environment correctly, such as ANT_HOME and ANT_HOME2 and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. But others, like PKG_CONFIG_PATH and PATH were not taken from the environment.

I expected that all the values in the environment would make it into the result of env, not just some of them.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 4 years ago
Comments: 20 (1 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Okay, I’ve got a solution that work for me now, combining my ideas above plus idea from #102 . Here’s the key to it:

    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [ubuntu, macos, windows]
        include:
          - os: windows
            shell: |
              powershell -command "[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('GITHUB_SCRIPT', ('{0}' -replace '\\','\\')); [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('PKG_CONFIG_PATH_MSYS', $Env:PKG_CONFIG_PATH); [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('PATH_MSYS', $Env:Path);"
              msys2 -c 'if [[ -v MSYSTEM ]]; then sed -i 1d $(cygpath $GITHUB_SCRIPT); sed -i \$d $(cygpath $GITHUB_SCRIPT); if [[ -v PKG_CONFIG_PATH_MSYS ]]; then export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH_MSYS; fi; if [[ -v PATH_MSYS && ! ( $PATH_MSYS =~ ^D:\\\\a\\\\_temp\\\\msys\\;C:\\\\Users ) ]]; then export PATH=$(echo $PATH_MSYS | sed s/D:\\\\\\\\a\\\\\\\\_temp\\\\\\\\msys\;// | sed s/\;/:/g); fi; fi; source $(cygpath $GITHUB_SCRIPT)'
          - os: ubuntu
            shell: bash
          - os: macos
            shell: bash
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}-latest
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: ${{ matrix.shell }}

With all that, you can use pretty much the same steps for both Windows/msys2 as for macos and linux. Specifically, GITHUB_PATH and GITHUB_ENV will be honored, as will any changed to PKG_CONFIG_PATH. You can see it in action here: https://github.com/pcb2gcode/pcb2gcode/actions

Based on this, I should also be fixing MANPATH and AC_LOCAL_PATH but that didn’t come up in my work. It could be fixed in the same way as PKG_CONFIG_PATH as above.

You maybe still need some if conditions to fix up places where Windows and Unix don’t behave the same. For example, brew versus apt-get versus pacman, but that’s to be expected.

Enjoy!

eyal0 on Jan 10, 2021

Please, let us know how it goes. Since this Action is very specifically to be used on GitHub Actions, I think it might make sense to add that feature into https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2/blob/master/main.js#L164-L168 (making it optional).

eine on Dec 25, 2020