v0.26.0 moving eas submit options to the app.json file is incompatible with gitlab ci

Summary

Changes in v0.26.0 to move the params out of the cli command and into the eas.json submit profile are incompatible with referencing the google service account path as an environment variable in Gitlab CI.

Pre v26

eas submit --platform android --latest --key=$GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT

Post v26

eas submit --platform android --latest --profile ci

eas.json:

...
"ci": {
      "android": {
        "track": "alpha",
        "serviceAccountKeyPath": "$GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT" 
      },
...

The changes in release v0.26.0 moved things like the --key param into the submit profile, so I added $GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT as the value in there, however, this doesn’t seem to successfully reference the gitlab CI environment variable, it instead treats it as just a string.

Has anyone else come across this yet since the v0.26.0 update? For obvious reasons I can’t simply commit the google service account to the repo and hardcode the path in the eas.json. Am I doing something wrong or is this change simply incompatible?

Environment

EAS CLI 0.26.0 environment info:
    System:
      OS: Linux 5.4 Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 9 (stretch)
      Shell: 4.4.12 - /bin/bash
    Binaries:
      Node: 12.22.6 - /usr/local/bin/node
      Yarn: 1.22.5 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
      npm: 6.14.15 - /usr/local/bin/npm
    Utilities:
      Git: 2.11.0 - /usr/bin/git
    npmPackages:
      expo: ^42.0.0 => 42.0.3 
      react: 16.13.1 => 16.13.1 
      react-dom: 16.13.1 => 16.13.1 
      react-native: https://github.com/expo/react-native/archive/sdk-42.0.0.tar.gz => 0.63.2 
      react-native-web: ~0.13.12 => 0.13.18 

Error output

File $GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT doesn't exist.
A Google Service Account JSON key is required to upload your app to Google Play Store.
If you're not sure what this is or how to create one, Learn more: https://expo.fyi/creating-google-service-account
    Error: Input is required, but stdin is not readable.
error Command failed with exit code 1.

Reproducible demo or steps to reproduce from a blank project

Use gitlab ci referencing the google service account key path in the eas.json submit profile as a gitlab ci variable

[DominikIlski]

Same issue here

[dsokal]

Ok, fair enough. I didn’t know Gitlab lets you mark an env variable as a file. I’ll implement the support for this soon 😃