Intermittent Error with sf project retrieve start Command

[Alfystar]

Summary

Steps To Reproduce

Hello,

I’m encountering an intermittent issue when running the sf project retrieve start command. Occasionally, I receive the following error, but if I retry the command, it executes successfully without any issues:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃                                                                                                                                                                                                ┃
┃ $> sf project retrieve start --target-org PreProd --ignore-conflicts --manifest fullRetrieveArtifact/package_ApexClass_51.xml --output-dir fullRetrieveArtifact/retrievePack/dir_51 --wait 240 ┃
┃ [ApexClass_51] Error command execution:                                                                                                                                                        ┃
┃ (node:17933) Warning: Setting the NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED environment variable to '0' makes TLS connections and HTTPS requests insecure by disabling certificate verification.            ┃
┃ (Use `node --trace-warnings ...` to show where the warning was created)                                                                                                                        ┃
┃ Error (2): Parsing --target-org                                                                                                                                                                ┃
┃   Unexpected end of JSON input                                                                                                                                                                 ┃
┃ See more help with --help                                                                                                                                                                      ┃
┃                                                                                                                                                                                                ┃
┃                                                                                                                                                                                                ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

As you can see the error: Unexpected end of JSON input is strange for a cli command

Expected result

The command should execute successfully on the first attempt without any errors.

Actual result

Some times fail and when i retry work well

System Information

{
  "architecture": "darwin-arm64",
  "cliVersion": "@salesforce/cli/2.50.6",
  "nodeVersion": "node-v20.15.0",
  "osVersion": "Darwin 23.5.0",
  "rootPath": "/Users/ea_enel/.local/share/sf/client/2.50.6-6e9d7f7",
  "shell": "zsh",
  "pluginVersions": [
    "@oclif/plugin-autocomplete 3.1.6 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-commands 4.0.6 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-help 6.2.5 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-not-found 3.2.10 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-plugins 5.3.4 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-search 1.2.2 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-update 4.4.7 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-version 2.2.6 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-warn-if-update-available 3.1.8 (core)",
    "@oclif/plugin-which 3.2.6 (core)",
    "@salesforce/cli 2.50.6 (core)",
    "apex 3.2.4 (core)",
    "auth 3.6.33 (core)",
    "data 3.5.5 (core)",
    "deploy-retrieve 3.9.13 (core)",
    "info 3.3.17 (core)",
    "limits 3.3.17 (core)",
    "marketplace 1.2.17 (core)",
    "org 4.3.4 (core)",
    "packaging 2.7.0 (core)",
    "schema 3.3.19 (core)",
    "settings 2.3.8 (core)",
    "sobject 1.4.19 (core)",
    "source 3.5.3 (core)",
    "telemetry 3.6.1 (core)",
    "templates 56.3.2 (core)",
    "trust 3.7.13 (core)",
    "user 3.5.17 (core)",
    "sfdx-plugin-source-read 1.2.0 (user) published 272 days ago (Tue Oct 24 2023)"
  ]
}

Thanks a lot!

[github-actions]

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[mshanemc]

there's several json file that's read for authing to that org.
~/.sfdx/<username>.json
~/,.sfdx/alias.json (since you used an alias PreProd)

I'd guess that one of those has something wrong with it when you see this happen. I don't have a good explanation for the intermittent part though. Next time it happens, take a peek at the file to see if there's something obvious about it.

[Alfystar]

I don't know if it can help to understand the situation, but I think it's important to add that I was doing parallel retrieves using python.
Could it be that inside the cli the file is whitened and then recreated?

[mshanemc]

I don't know if it can help to understand the situation, but I think it's important to add that I was doing parallel retrieves using python.

that's likely the problem.

[git2gus]

This issue has been linked to a new work item: W-16322519

[Alfystar]

Received, next time it comes up I'll do a more in-depth analysis

[mshanemc]

hey, I think we found a way to replicate this and have a fix for it. It went out in the nightly 2.55.0

[iowillhoit]

This is now in latest