[rush] Env variables for custom commands

[Nojukubi]

Is this a feature or a bug?

• Feature
• Bug

Please describe the actual behavior.
There is no way to predefine Env variables for the custom commands.

What is the expected behavior?
A real-life example where it can be very useful is to disable the stdout output from a large amount of simultaneous processes. Our project contains a few Vue projects that have terminal spinners, so on rush build the console becomes fully filled with redundant messages.

Suggest to have at command-line.json possibility to specify env variables in format:

env: {
  KEY: value
}

[iclanton]

I like this idea. @D4N14L, @octogonz, and I are currently working on redesigning some parts of custom commands and this sounds like a good addition to that plan.

[octogonz]

A real-life example where it can be very useful is to disable the stdout output from a large amount of simultaneous processes. Our project contains a few Vue projects that have terminal spinners, so on rush build the console becomes fully filled with redundant messages.

How would an environment variable help with this problem?

Also, could you assign the environment variable in the script itself? What's the advantage of having Rush set up the environment?

[Nojukubi]

How would an environment variable help with this problem?

At build script we can handle the output based on SILENT env variable.

Also, could you assign the environment variable in the script itself?

In this case, the output will also be restricted using `rushx', which most likely is unwanted behavior.

What's the advantage of having Rush set up the environment?

Other case that I can think about is testing. Using rushx test developer definitely want to see reporter output (cases + coverage), but with rush test for 10+ packages interesting is only final package pass/fail and not mess of command outputs.

Of course, there are other ways to solve this particular problem, perhaps the output of the commands can be restricted by an additional property in `command-line.json' that can be configured.

[octogonz]

👍 Makes sense. @Nojukubi are you able to create a PR?

[Nojukubi]

@octogonz, all depends on chosen solution from suggests:

• env variables (more complex)
• allow to disable stdout (seems easier)

[crhaglun]

In one of the projects I'm working on, we would like to set some additional node options when running tests, but we don't want to set the options globally, and we would like to avoid updating package.json files for all projects.

Just to check if I'm understanding the suggestion correctly, is the idea that we could declare something like this in command-line.json:

  "commands": [
    {
      "commandKind": "bulk",
      "name": "test",
      "summary": "Runs tests locally.",
      "description": "Run jest for each project.",
      "enableParallelism": true,
      "ignoreDependencyOrder": true,
      "env": {
        "NODE_OPTIONS": "--unhandled-rejections=strict"
       }
    },

[ujwal-setlur]

Hi, just checking on the status of this. Thanks.