Fails when yarn global bin is not in $PATH

[elwynelwyn]

I'm just setting this up on a new pipeline, and I've selected a Hosted Ubuntu 1604 from the Azure Pipelines agent pool.

This Ubuntu instance has yarn installed, however the yarn globals bin directory is not in the $PATH.

This means that the Renovate task successfully does the global yarn install of the renovate package, but when it comes time to run, fails with an error that renovate can not be found.

My workaround was to add a new Bash task in the pipeline before Renovate, which runs this:

echo '##vso[task.prependpath]$(yarn global bin)'

It would be great though if this was not necessary. A couple of options come to mind. One would be to run renovate via npx. This would add a dependency on having a recent version of npm available, but it would mean there is no need for the global install. Another would be to figure out the absolute path to the Renovate binary by using the yarn global bin command.

[wescopeland]

The Renovate task is currently failing in Azure Pipelines for me due to this issue, and unfortunately the Bash task workaround doesn't seem to be working.

[jycouet]

Actually, when you look at the Readme.md, you can see that I was using the task Yarn Tool Installer, and everything was working fine. A few months ago, it stopped working because of an issue that in renovate, he was not able to find the path of yarn (like you!!!) I tried many things without any success :(

Today I don't use the task Yarn Tool Installer and renovate is using npm directly. It's working... but without yarn!

But I agree that it would be good to be more integrated... So what are the options?

1. npx? (I don't know this, maybe you can guide me?)
2. The absolute path to the Renovate binary by using the yarn global bin command. I'm not sure where you want to go?! Could you explain more? :)

//Project is going back to active :)

[elwynelwyn]

1. With npx, you would not globally install Renovate at all. So lines ~50 - 60 would go away. Then your runRenovate would change to

   const runRenovate: ExecutionOptions = { tool: 'npx', arguments: `renovate@${renovateOptionsVersion} ${renovateArgs}` }

   npx will take care of installing renovate and then runs it, all in one.

2. You can get the path to the bin folder by executing yarn global bin. You can then save this into a variable, and in your runRenovate if it is yarn capable you can do

   { tool: yarnBinPath + 'renovate'` ...

[jycouet]

1. I will then need to install npx globally first. So is it really better?

2. I will correct it now and see your feedback 👍

[elwynelwyn]

For 1., no, npx is available everywhere npm is available (it installs with npm, from version 5.2.0 onwards)

[jycouet]

@elwynelwyn can you have a look? I merged with the "manual search of the bin path".

And now see that with npx... we can remove a LOT of lines! Hummm... what is the best?

[elwynelwyn]

Looks good! Thank you for making the change!