bug: Projects without `environments` nor `default_environment` see error where `dev` environment is not found

Meltano Version

2.5.0

Python Version

NA

Bug scope

Configuration (settings parsing, validation, etc.)

Operating System

NA

Description

Users with projects created from scratch (not using meltano init) or started before Environments where introduced may not be using default_environment nor environments in their meltano.yml.

This causes an error because in 2.5.0 we made default_environment a project setting that defaults to dev. Any project without a dev environment, as those exemplified above, will see an error because Meltano will be looking for dev.

Code

$ meltano install
Environment 'dev' was not found

This is reproducible with the following meltano.yml:

plugins:
  loaders:
  - name: target-jsonl
    variant: andyh1203
    pip_url: target-jsonl

Workaround

From AJ:

There should be two ways to work around this issue.

Running meltano environment add dev as a one-time fix will resolve the issue, even if no other changes are made and no environment-specific settings are added.

Adding the --no-environment CLI arg will override the default dev environment name.

[aaronsteers]

@tayloramurphy - I’ve added a “Workarounds” section above in the description. Since the workarounds seem pretty clear, I’m not seeing this as a high urgency item - or at least not high enough urgency that we’d want to introduce new tech debt or promote unsupported execution paths.

[alanmcruickshank]

Upgrade to 2.8.0 has helped with this issue! (caused another - but I think solvable) 👍