Installation of System-Mode Runner Produces Inapropriate plist

Summary

gitlab-runner requires $HOME to be set. launchd as of macOS Catalina does not populate the environment variables when launch daemons are run as root (not documented, but it behaves like this). When installing gitlab-runner as a service using sudo gitlab-runner install [...], it does not specify a UserName key in the installed /Library/LaunchDaemons/gitlab-runner.plist. This makes the UserName default to root, therefore launchd does not populate the environment variables, therefore gitlab-runner is missing its $HOME and fails to start.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Catalina.
2. Install gitlab-runner 12.5 and its dependencies (just tested: 12.6.0~beta.2039.g9454bbff has the same problem, too) as adviced in https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/osx.html
3. Verify it works using gitlab-runner run
4. sudo gitlab-runner install --user root (the user has to be provided but does not matter here)
5. sudo gitlab-runner start

Actual behavior

Doesn't start.

Expected behavior

Starts.

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

syslog has plenty of

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (gitlab-runner[9457]) <Warning>: Service exited with abnormal code: 1
com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (gitlab-runner) <Notice>: Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

If you redirect the stderr by editing the gitlab-runner.plist you get:

FATAL: the "HOME" is not set                       

Environment description

Darwin osxbuildbot-test 19.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.0.0: Wed Oct 23 18:29:05 PDT 2019; root:xnu-6153.41.3~44/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

System Version: macOS 10.15.1 (19B2106)
Kernel Version: Darwin 19.0.0

Used GitLab Runner version

gitlab-runner --version
Version:      12.6.0~beta.2039.g9454bbff
Git revision: 9454bbff
Git branch:   master
GO version:   go1.10.8
Built:        2019-11-22T15:58:59+0000
OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64

respectively

gitlab-runner --version
Version:      12.5.0
Git revision: 577f813d
Git branch:   12-5-stable
GO version:   go1.13.4
Built:        2019-11-21T14:49:38+00:00
OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64

Possible fixes

You can add a UserName key to the plist whose value is not root and make the working directory and the config.toml accessible to that user and let launchd populate the environment variables. Or you can provide a $HOME using the EnvironmentVariables key in the plist.

Workaround

Define a user on install sudo gitlab-runner install --user someUser