External plugins discovery fails when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set

[em-r]

What broke? What's expected?

On Ubuntu, when specifying an external plugin to any subcommand (e.g. init) through the --plugins flag, the subcommand fails if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set to its default value $HOME/.config, with the following error:

2023/02/11 15:35:25 no plugin could be resolved with key "myexternalplugin/v1"

The subcommands eventually run successfully after unsetting XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

Reproducing this issue

1. Set XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable in the shell: export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/.config
2. Create a folder for an external plugin: mkdir -p $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kubebuilder/plugins/myexternalplugin/v1
3. Copy the plugin binary to the directory created in 2).
4. Initialize a new project: kubebuilder init --plugins=myexternalplugin/v1
5. Notice how the execution will exit with an error, and myexternalplugin won't appear in the available plugins table.

KubeBuilder (CLI) Version

3.9.0

PROJECT version

No response

Plugin versions

No response

Other versions

Go version: 1.19.4 linux/amd64
OS version: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS

Extra Labels

No response

[em-r]

Looking at the code, I believe this issue occurs because Kubebuilder concatenates the outcome of getHomeDir (which maybe $XDG_CONFIG_HOME) to .config (see options.go#L182)

So, when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set, Kubebuilder will try to find external plugins in the directory $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.config/kubebuilder.
For example, if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set to its default value ($HOME/.config), then Kubebuilder will lookup external plugins in $HOME/.config/.config/kubebuilder.

[em-r]

I'll be happy to send a PR with a fix if this gets accepted.

[camilamacedo86]

Hi @em-r,

All issues that you find if you either be able to contribute with the fix that is amazing !!! please feel free to move forward !!!

[em-r]

Thank you @camilamacedo86, always happy to help. I'll try to put together fixes for any issue I report.

/assign