Subject: Re: [PATCH] ci: unset GITLAB_FEATURES envvar to not bust xargs(1) limits

From: Justin Tobler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2026 00:32:56 -0600

On 26/03/03 07:15AM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 02, 2026 at 11:11:52AM -0600, Justin Tobler wrote:
> > On 26/03/02 12:55PM, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> [snip]
> > > The GITLAB_FEATURES environment variable makes up for roughly a third of
> > > the complete environment. This variable is a comma-separated list of
> > > features available for the GitLab instance, and seemingly it has been
> > > growing over time as GitLab added more and more features.
> > > 
> > > Fix the issue by unsetting the environment variable in "ci/lib.sh". This
> > > ensures that the environment variables are now smaller than the upper
> > > limit on argument length again, and that in turn fixes the assert in
> > > xargs(1).
> > 
> > So if we unset GITLAB_FEATURES, that puts us at 10987 bytes (17373 -
> > 6386) which would be under the upper limit. Unsetting this environment
> > variable seems like a reasonable means to mitigate this problem. Naive
> > question: is the upper limit something we could increase for the
> > environment?
> 
> Unfortunately not. Under normal Linux systems you'd be able to do that,
> but in MSYS2 the limits are hardcoded as far as I could see.

Ah ok, good to know. I was wondering if there would be value in trying
to increase the headroom we have in case the overall size of the
environment variables increases over time again, but it sounds like this
wouldn't be possible. Hopefully we should be good though. :)

Thanks,
-Justin