Recent change silently makes environment variables undefined

[j127]

Preliminary Checks

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Description

This valid JavaScript was working in Gatsby components until a couple of weeks ago:

const { GATSBY_MY_VAR } = process.env;

It now silently fails as undefined and only works with this syntax:

const GATSBY_MY_VAR = process.env.GATSBY_MY_VAR;

Reproduction Link

https://github.com/j127/gatsby-bug

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clone the repo.
2. Run npm i
3. Run npm run build
4. Check out the error in the terminal.
5. Check here to see the code.

Expected Result

const { GATSBY_MY_VAR } = process.env; should load the environment variable.

Actual Result

The variable is undefined.

Environment

System:
    OS: macOS 12.5.1
    CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M1 Max
    Shell: 5.8.1 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.15.1 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.15.1/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.15.1/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.11.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.15.1/bin/npm
  Languages:
    Python: 3.10.2 - /Users/username/.pyenv/shims/python
  Browsers:
    Firefox: 104.0.1
    Safari: 15.6.1
  npmPackages:
    gatsby: ^4.22.0 => 4.22.0

### Config Flags

_No response_

[KyleAMathews]

Do you know what version this last worked on? Thanks for the reproduction!

[j127]

My package.json says ^4.16.0, but installed version is 4.21.0.

August 16th is the last time I can verify that it definitely worked, and the package-lock.json file changed on August 16th or 17th from 4.16.0 to 4.21.0, so it should be in that range.

[marvinjude]

Hi @j127,

Seem to me that this has always been the case even before 4.16.0. I tested 4.15 through 4.22 and the behaviour is the same.

Edit: This behaviour was introduced in #10030 (~4yrs ago) and hasn't changed since then

I'll close this for now. Feel free to reopen if you feel otherwise

[j127]

Strange. I'm not sure what is going on, because this code was working until August 16th (on Gatsby 4.16.0), but stopped working as soon as it was updated. I can even go back to 2021 in the file history, and it was successfully making API requests when loading the environment variable this:

const { GATSBY_API_KEY } = process.env;

I tried that bug repo with 4.16.0 and am getting a _gatsbyScript.PartytownContext is undefined for some reason, so I'll leave it.

[marvinjude]

I tried that bug repo with 4.16.0 and am getting a _gatsbyScript.PartytownContext is undefined for some reason, so I'll leave it.

You are seeing this error because your project has a newer version of gatsby-script which no longer has PartytownContext. As a workaround, to enable you to test older versions you'd want to pin the "gatsby-script" version(with resolutions) and force install dependencies.

We've made the change that wouldn't make const { GATSBY_API_KEY } = process.env possible since 2018 so It's hard to tell why you were able to do this in a recent version.

I'm happy to follow up on this if you find anything.

[j127]

We've made the change that wouldn't make const { GATSBY_API_KEY } = process.env possible since 2018 so It's hard to tell why you were able to do this in a recent version.

It's strange, because that syntax was definitely working on my site until August 16th. I can't see any way that people could have used that API without that API key loading. The moment it became undefined, the API calls stopped working until I changed that line.

I'll post back here if I ever find the answer. It might be worth fixing anyway, because there are no warnings about why valid JS is failing. If a user sees that const { GATSBY_API_KEY } = process.env is failing to load the variable, they probably aren't going to intuitively think that const GATSBY_API_KEY = process.env.GATSBY_API_KEY would be the solution.

[schmod]

For us, this appears to have regressed from 4.14.1 to 4.15.0