specifying the environment variable PUPPET_GEM_VERSION does not work

[ghoneycutt]

Describe the bug
The Gemfile allows for specifying the puppet version with the environment variable PUPPET_GEM_VERSION. When this is done, errors happens where I would expect no errors and for PDK to use the version specified.

To Reproduce

export PUPPET_GEM_VERSION=6.3.0
pdk validate

Expected behavior
For PDK to use Puppet 6.3.0 and for the tests to succeed.

Additional context

• Your PDK installation method: native packages

• Your PDK version: 1.9.0

• Your operating system / platform: MacOS Mojave

[rodjek]

PUPPET_GEM_VERSION is not part of the PDK "public API". It remains in the puppetlabs/pdk-templates Gemfile template for compatibility with existing CI setups that call the rake tasks from puppetlabs_spec_helper. The correct way to specify the Puppet version with PDK commands is the --puppet-version or --pe-version flags - https://puppet.com/docs/pdk/1.x/pdk_reference.html#pdk-validate-command.

[ghoneycutt]

Thanks for explaining how to achieve this! Please re-open though as specifying this environment variable should not cause pdk to not work. Would expect that pdk would ignore it and continue on or document that specifying this will break things.

[scotje]

@ghoneycutt can you clarify what errors you are receiving in this situation? PDK should be ignoring the exported value of PUPPET_GEM_VERSION as it carefully manages the execution environment of it's subprocesses.

(Edit: I tried and was unable to replicate this issue in my local environment.)

[ghoneycutt]

I could not reproduce using the steps above with PDK 1.9.1. Though I was able to get this error when running pdk test unit

rpcbind$ export PUPPET_GEM_VERSION=6.3.0
rpcbind$ pdk test unit
pdk (INFO): Using Ruby 2.5.3
pdk (INFO): Using Puppet 6.2.0
[✔] Installing missing Gemfile dependencies.
pdk (FATAL): Failed to generate binstubs for 'rake rspec-core':
You have requested:
  puppet = 6.3.0

The bundle currently has puppet locked at 6.2.0.
Try running `bundle update puppet`

If you are updating multiple gems in your Gemfile at once,
try passing them all to `bundle update`


pdk (FATAL): Unable to install requested binstubs.

[ghoneycutt]

This makes adoption hard as I normally export that variable with the current work flow that uses rvm and bundler. When migrating to PDK I have to remember to unset it. A better user experience would be PDK telling me that it is set and that it shouldn't be and that it's going to ignore it and tell me to use --puppet-version or --pe-version to specify the version.

[scotje]

I have created https://tickets.puppetlabs.com/browse/PDK-1337 to track this in JIRA.

[rodjek]

Fixed in #671