Environment variables get applied as options to any command

[wagnerand]

Is this a bug or feature request?

This is a bug.

What is the current behavior?

I have set WEB_EXT_API_KEY and WEB_EXT_API_SECRET in my ~/.bash_profile.
Running web-ext build for any webextension project fails with the following error:
Unknown arguments: apiSecret, apiKey
When I remove the two environment variables, web-ext works fine.

What is the expected or desired behavior?

web-ext build (and other commands) should ignore environment variables they don't need.

Version information (for bug reports)

• Firefox version: irrelevant
• Your OS and version: MacOS 1.12.3
• Paste the output of these commands:

node --version && npm --version && web-ext --version

v7.5.0
4.1.2
1.6.0

[kumar303]

oof, good catch. I'm pretty sure this has existed ever since #226 but no one else noticed. It's because those env variables are only recognized by the sign command. For other commands, our parser thinks they are env vars for unknown options.

[eight04]

This make environment variable totally unusable... and it seems that web-ext use yargs to parse env variable (https://github.com/mozilla/web-ext/blob/master/src/program.js#L88). Should we move this to yargs or any other ideas to fix this?

[kumar303]

Oops, I should have filed an upstream bug originally. Here it is: yargs/yargs#873

[stephenmathieson]

Any updates here? I just killed over an hour trying to figure this out.

---

Hack I'm using to work-around this for now:

APIKEY="$WEB_EXT_API_KEY"
APISECRET="$WEB_EXT_API_SECRET"
unset WEB_EXT_API_KEY
unset WEB_EXT_API_SECRET

# Zip the Firefox extension.
npx web-ext build --config-discovery=false

# Zip+sign (XPI) the Firefox extension.
npx web-ext sign \
  --api-key=$APIKEY \
  --api-secret=$APISECRET \
  --config-discovery=false

[Rob--W]

No updates yet. I have planned a patch to upgrade our yargs dependency to resolve some issues ( #1307 and #1327 in particular). That might or might not fix this issue.
Regardless, you should be able to set the key and secret in the config file once #1327 is resolved.

[stephenmathieson]

I'm creating these archives on CI and want to use environment variables rather than having to worry about creating a config file.

Do you have an estimate as to when the yargs dep will be updated?

[Rob--W]

Not soon, unfortunately. I ran in multiple issues when I tried to upgrade and have other higher pressing tasks that I need to work on.

[stephenmathieson]

OK, fair enough.

Perhaps adding something to the README and/or https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/web-ext_command_reference would suffice for now?

[kumar303]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/web-ext_command_reference

This page is editable.

[Fedcomp]

wow, middle of 2019 and still not fixed

[bella-strange]

Just ran into this as well.

[doronbehar]

Yea this is very annoying. It's a shame this issue doesn't get any attention. It feels as if the developers aren't even using the environmental variables credentials feature so that's why it doesn't bother them.