-env VAR overwrites the samely named var in Docker container if it's not set in host environment

[vittorius]

Description

The docs state:

If no = is provided and that variable is not exported in your local environment, the variable won’t be set in the container.

But, when I pass an ENV variable which is not exported in my local environment to a container (docker run -e VAR) which has defined such a var by using ENV Dockerfile instruction, the variable gets overwritten with an empty value inside the container.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

I have a Dockerfile with:

FROM alpine:latest

ARG MY_VAR
ENV MY_VAR ${MY_VAR:-default}

ENTRYPOINT []

Then, I build it like:

docker build --build-arg MY_VAR=custom -t my-image .

Next, I run the container:

$ docker run -it my-image sh
/ $ echo $MY_VAR
custom
/ $

Everything works as expected until I pass an ENV var which is not exported into my host environment - the var actually gets set in the container, with an empty value.

Describe the results you received:

$ docker run -it -e MY_VAR my-image sh
/ $ echo $MY_VAR

/ $

Describe the results you expected:

$ docker run -it -e MY_VAR my-image sh
/ $ echo $MY_VAR
custom
/ $

Additional information you deem important (e.g. issue happens only occasionally):

I believe this behavior could be because of this line of code in CLI, specifically this call: opts.ConvertKVStringsToMapWithNil(copts.env.GetAll()).

Output of docker version:

Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           18.09.2
 API version:       1.39
 Go version:        go1.10.8
 Git commit:        6247962
 Built:             Sun Feb 10 04:12:39 2019
 OS/Arch:           darwin/amd64
 Experimental:      false

Server: Docker Engine - Community
 Engine:
  Version:          18.09.2
  API version:      1.39 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.10.6
  Git commit:       6247962
  Built:            Sun Feb 10 04:13:06 2019
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     true

Output of docker info:

Containers: 10
 Running: 2
 Paused: 0
 Stopped: 8
Images: 48
Server Version: 18.09.2
Storage Driver: overlay2
 Backing Filesystem: extfs
 Supports d_type: true
 Native Overlay Diff: true
Logging Driver: json-file
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
Plugins:
 Volume: local
 Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
 Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local logentries splunk syslog
Swarm: inactive
Runtimes: runc
Default Runtime: runc
Init Binary: docker-init
containerd version: 9754871865f7fe2f4e74d43e2fc7ccd237edcbce
runc version: 09c8266bf2fcf9519a651b04ae54c967b9ab86ec
init version: fec3683
Security Options:
 seccomp
  Profile: default
Kernel Version: 4.9.125-linuxkit
Operating System: Docker for Mac
OSType: linux
Architecture: x86_64
CPUs: 4
Total Memory: 1.952GiB
Name: linuxkit-025000000001
ID: ZD74:JC3O:ANF3:FR6Q:DWDR:2XM5:C52E:UCO7:WWHZ:QPXA:ZVE2:CSTE
Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
Debug Mode (client): false
Debug Mode (server): true
 File Descriptors: 38
 Goroutines: 61
 System Time: 2019-03-27T20:43:47.4933493Z
 EventsListeners: 2
HTTP Proxy: gateway.docker.internal:3128
HTTPS Proxy: gateway.docker.internal:3129
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/
Labels:
Experimental: true
Insecure Registries:
 172.16.1.1:5000
 127.0.0.0/8
Live Restore Enabled: false
Product License: Community Engine

Additional environment details (AWS, VirtualBox, physical, etc.):

uname -a:

uname -a
Darwin ephemeral.local 18.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.2.0: Mon Nov 12 20:24:46 PST 2018; root:xnu-4903.231.4~2/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64 i386 MacBookPro11,4 Darwin

[vittorius]

Any updates on this?

[collin5]

Will take a crack at this in the next couple of days.