Env vars are missing in the built image

[tdclaritum]

I have tried to build an image for our app that should be deployed on App Engine. The following command is used to build the image:

pack -v build --builder gcr.io/gae-runtimes/buildpacks/google-gae-22/php/builder  --run-image lca-runner eu.gcr.io/XXX/appengine/default.20231003161300:latest --clear-cache --env GAE_APPLICATION_YAML_PATH="app.yaml"

The custom run image is because the default one is missing libzip4 (but I don't believe this is important).

The app.yaml file contains the following:

env_variables:
    # populate these to use the "mysql" or "postres" backends
    DB_SOCKET: "/cloudsql/III:XXX:DDD"
    DB_USER: "user"
    DB_PASS: "pass"
    DB_NAME: "db"

The final image is build without any issues but the env vars are not set. Because of this the image is unusable when deployed on App Engine, because it can't connect to the DB.

The question is what I'm doing wrong and what to change, so the env vars are set properly?

[smsohan]

How are you deploying this image? Can you share the command you're using to deploy this image?

[tdclaritum]

The command I used is :

gcloud app deploy --verbosity=info --image-url eu.gcr.io/local-pier-382211/appengine/default.20231003161300:latest --project=local-pier-382211

But shouldn't the flex analyser process the app.yaml and add the env vars to the image? It configures nginx to set the correct directory where the index.php is set, so I expect that it also should add the env vars.

[kennethye1]

The runtime environment variables works with env_variables. build_env_variables is at build time.

[tdclaritum]

@kennethye1 gcloud app deploy will trigger the image to be build by the cloud builder and in this case the env vars will be set. In my case I'm building the image locally and after this deploying this image to app cloud.

@kappratiksha there are 2 spaces in my file.

I will create a simple project and will share with you to see what I'm doing and how.

[kennethye1]

I don't think buildpacks supports runtime environment variables. If you take a look at the pack CLI docs, it specifically notes for --env NOTE: These are NOT available at image runtime.

[kennethye1]

I think I understand what you want. You want us to add set the LaunchEnvironment variables from env_variables in app.yaml Feel free to open a feature request.

[kappratiksha]

As a workaround, you can try to manually set the environment variables inside the run image. This should unblock you for now.

[tdclaritum]

Thank you for all your answers. My expectations and assumptions where wrong.

Yesterday when I started the discussion I saw a database connection error in the App Engine logs. It's a general error and happens in different situations including missing socket file. I checked the image locally and saw that the env vars are not set in the local container. I expected that env vars would be set when the image is build but this is not true.

After all your suggestions and answers I have created a simple project and build an image. This image doesn't have the env vars but after it's deployed to App Engine they are set correctly. So my initial expectation was wrong and there is no problem with the evn vars after the image is deployed to App Engine.