Setenv in env with broken deployment

[andrew-aladjev]

Description

Application includes Dockerrun.aws.json with AWSEBDockerrunVersion: 3 and docker-compose.yml.
docker-compose.yml uses env variable from .env.

Steps to reproduce

Deployment looks as follows:

eb init
eb create
eb setenv $(cat '.env')
eb deploy

Env is broken: eb deploy fails. But I can't do redeploy because eb setenv fails. eb setenv somehow consider that it should re-reploy right now without uploading the new version using eb deploy. The full list of invocations is the following:

eb terminate
eb init
eb create
eb setenv $(cat '.env')
eb deploy # fails
# now trying to redeploy
eb setenv $(cat '.env') # fails

Observed result

eb setenv tries to redeploy the current app version that should not be redeployed. There is no option to turn off this logic. It is not possible to move eb deploy before eb setenv, because docker-compose.yml depends on env.

Expected result

eb setenv should have an option to turn off the redeployment madness. Users should be able to set env without redeployment.

Additional environment details (Ex: Windows, Mac, Amazon Linux etc)

1. OS: Ubuntu 25.10
2. EBCLI version: 3.25

PS there is a workaround: eb setenv --timeout 0. It allows not waiting for silly redeployment, but redeployment will still be done in background. BTW eb deploy after eb setenv --timeout 0 will wait until this silly redeployment will be done.

[andrew-aladjev]

eb setenv deploys the current HEAD commit, ignoring any logic of deployment when it can't find the current version in env! eb setenv breaks the environment, and after that, eb deploy fails with Environment named app is in an invalid state for this operation. Must be Ready..

This is just complete madness. What are you doing?

[andrew-aladjev]

The workaround for now is to use --envvars in eb create in order to prepare the environment initially, which will stop eb setenv from doing idiocy. It allows to move eb setenv after eb deploy:

function join_by {
  local IFS="$1"
  shift
  echo "$*"
}

readarray -t ENV_VALUES < <(cat '.env' | tr -s '\n')

ENV_VARS=$(join_by ',' "${ENV_VALUES[@]}")
eb create --envvars "$ENV_VARS" ... || :

eb deploy ...

ENV_VARS=$(join_by ' ' "${ENV_VALUES[@]}")
eb setenv $ENV_VARS ...

PS || : for eb create is important to make it idempotent.