"ENV" randomly added to environment variables that originate from features can prevent container from starting

Currently if you add both the node and python features, the container will fail to start properly in Remote - Containers stable.

In CLI 0.10.1, try building using this devcontainer.json…

{
    "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0-bullseye",
    "features": {
       "node": "latest",
       "python": "os-provided"
    } 
}

Now, start the container using the image that was built but specify /bin/bash as the entrypoint:

docker run -it --rm <image-id> /bin/bash -c 'echo ${PATH}'

You will get…

/usr/local/python/bin:/usr/local/share/nvm/current/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/binENV:/usr/local/py-utils/bin:/root/.local/bin

The ENV is smashed up against /bin (becoming /binENV) which prevents anything under the /bin folder, including bash, from being found.

With 0.11.1 or using the new dev container features via OCI, you will instead see a hang after the installation of Python followed eventually by lots of errors about chown… possibly caused by the same type of thing.

{
    "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0-bullseye",
    "features": {
       "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/node": "latest",
       "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/python": "os-provided"
    } 
}

Build result:

...
#0 46.35 Updating /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/zsh/zshrc...
#0 141.7 chmod: cannot access '/usr/local/share/nvm/test/fast/Listing': No such
file or directory
#0 141.7 chmod: cannot access 'versions': No such file or directory
#0 141.7 chmod: cannot access '/usr/local/share/nvm/test/fast/Listing': No such
file or directory
...

[rzhao271]

I verified that ENV doesn’t get randomly added now. For the second JSON example, I get the error “Expected feature identifier to contain only alphanumeric and/or the ‘-’ characters.” in the editor on Windows, because “ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/node” contains slashes.

[samruddhikhandale]

Also - the v2 hang in this scenario is still there, correct? Do we want to fork this issue for that part?

Published a new Feature release with the fix! 🚀 https://github.com/devcontainers/features/issues/110#issuecomment-1224806955