Provide a method to overwrite/disable predefined CI variables before being sent to the runner
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Problem to solve
Linux systems have a size limit for any single environment variable value. This is set via the MAX_ARG_STRLEN definiton during compilation of the kernel. This value generally ends up being 131072 bytes, or 128 KiB.
If any given environment variable exceeds this value, the following error occurs: exec /usr/bin/dumb-init: argument list too long. This has resulted in previous issues like the following:
While there are multiple ways to workaround this issue for user defined variables, there are none available when this error is specific to predefined variables, as there is no method to override their value before the build or helper containers are created.
This can be problematic for users who work upstream from a code base in which they cannot control the size of specific commit messages. This results in failed pipelines due to the above error, where the only solution is to manually truncate commit messages, interrupting normal CI/CD flow.
Proposal
Provide a mechanism to manually disable or overwrite predefined CI/CD variables before they are provided to the runner. Being able to selectively disable or overwrite CI_COMMIT_MESSAGE would ultimately resolve this edge case and circumvent the need for manual intervention.
Intended users
Does this feature require an audit event?
Unknown.
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