Global environment variables

Build Environment
1

Hi, this:

machine:
  environment:
    START_TIME: "`date +%Y-%m-%d-%T`"
    PATH: "${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"
    DO_DEFAULT_REGION: "nyc3"
    AWS_DEFAULT_REGION: "us-east-1"
    TEST_NAME: "TEST-`tr -dc '[:xdigit:]' < /dev/urandom | head -c 8`"
    IMAGE_NAME: "$TEST_NAME-$START_TIME"

Clearly won’t have the expected result because the date and tr command will vary per line in the circleci file. How do I get this data to be generated once per run? Thanks.

2

Answered my own question:

machine:
  environment:
    PATH: "${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"
    DO_DEFAULT_REGION: "nyc3"
    AWS_DEFAULT_REGION: "us-east-1"
  python:
    version: 2.7.10

dependencies:
  cache_directories:
    - "~/bin"
  pre:
    - ./env_hack.sh

Here is env_hack.sh:

#!/bin/bash

#varibles hack.
export START_TIME="`date +%Y-%m-%d-%T`"
export TEST_NAME="TEST-`tr -dc '[:xdigit:]' < /dev/urandom | head -c 8`"
export IMAGE_NAME="$TEST_NAME-$START_TIME"

echo -e "export START_TIME=$START_TIME\nexport TEST_NAME=$TEST_NAME\nexport IMAGE_NAME=$IMAGE_NAME\n" >> ~/.circlerc

It would be nice if this technique was mentioned in the documentation, the persistence of variables is done in an obtuse way.