Environment variables in $GITHUB_ENV ignored for PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH

I’m using $GITHUB_ENV to modify environment variables. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

In my CI yaml file, I have this:

    - name: Setup paths and env
      run: |
        mkdir -p $HOME/.local/bin
        mkdir -p $HOME/.local/lib/pkgconfig
        echo "PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/.local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "ANT_HOME=foo" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        echo "ANT_HOME2=bar" >> $GITHUB_ENV

And later on in the same ci, I have this:

    - name: Display information about build environment
      continue-on-error: true
      run: |
        env
        g++ --version
        clang++ --version
        pkg-config --version
        m4 --version

The first one should put some new variables into $GITHUB_ENV. Those variable then become part of the execution environment for the second one. We can see that it somewhat works. Here’s the log of the CI run:

2020-12-25T16:24:59.5787589Z ##[group]Run env
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788080Z env
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788444Z g++ --version
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5788831Z clang++ --version
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5789451Z pkg-config --version
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5789887Z m4 --version
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5792315Z shell: D:\a\_temp\msys\msys2.CMD {0}
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5792732Z env:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5793218Z   MSYSTEM: MINGW64
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5793969Z   PKG_CONFIG_PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/share/pkgconfig
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5794828Z   LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/lib:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5796094Z   PATH: /home/runneradmin/.local/bin:/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5797320Z   ANT_HOME: foo
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5797714Z   ANT_HOME2: bar
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5798095Z   NUM_CPUS: 8
2020-12-25T16:24:59.5798458Z ##[endgroup]
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9898476Z USERDOMAIN=fv-az177-439
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9899859Z OS=Windows_NT
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9901764Z LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/runneradmin/.local/lib:
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9904727Z COMMONPROGRAMFILES=C:\Program Files\Common Files
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9919605Z PROCESSOR_LEVEL=6
2020-12-25T16:24:59.9921928Z PSModulePath=C:\Modules\azurerm_2.1.0;C:\Modules\azure_2.1.0;C:\Users\packer\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Tools\PowerShell\Modules\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Cloud SDK\google-cloud-sdk\platform\PowerShell
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0211451Z ANT_HOME2=bar
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0265443Z ANT_HOME=foo
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0272362Z PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/share/pkgconfig
2020-12-25T16:25:00.0267298Z PATH=/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl

(I didn’t include all the lines in the above log to keep it brief. Full log here.)

Notice how the environment for this command includes setting variables like MSYSTEM, PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and others in the very first lines. And then when we view the results of env, some of those were set into the environment correctly, such as ANT_HOME and ANT_HOME2 and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. But others, like PKG_CONFIG_PATH and PATH were not taken from the environment.

I expected that all the values in the environment would make it into the result of env, not just some of them.

[eine]

Please, let us know how it goes. Since this Action is very specifically to be used on GitHub Actions, I think it might make sense to add that feature into https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2/blob/master/main.js#L164-L168 (making it optional).

[eyal0]

@eine I never figured out what’s going on here: https://github.com/msys2/setup-msys2/issues/98#issuecomment-751411288

How come the scripts have that line added at the top and bottom. And how come msys2 is unaffected? It’s strange to me.

Do you know where I could search inside of the GitHub actions to find if those lines are being added somewhere?