"balena env add" does not accept service variables?

Product support
1

Perhaps I’m doing something wrong, but I was reading the documentation here and saw that it was possible to add service variables, though I get the following error when attempting to do so

matthew@thinkpad ~ $ balena env add OCTOPRINT_APIKEY 82F64792280242B89E63D2DFDF5C115E --device 338d9c2 --service octodash
Unexpected arguments: --service, octodash
See more help with --help

Additional information may be available by setting a DEBUG=1 environment
variable: "set DEBUG=1" on a Windows command prompt, or "export DEBUG=1"
on Linux or macOS.

If you need help, don't hesitate in contacting our support forums at
https://forums.balena.io

For CLI bug reports or feature requests, have a look at the GitHub issues or
create a new one at: https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli/issues/

When doing balena help env add the documentation in the CLI contradicts the aforementioned documentation. Has it ever been possible to do this?

matthew@thinkpad ~ $ balena help env add
Add an environment or config variable to an application or device.

USAGE
  $ balena env add NAME [VALUE]

ARGUMENTS
  NAME   environment or config variable name
  VALUE  variable value; if omitted, use value from CLI's environment

OPTIONS
  -a, --application=application  application name
  -d, --device=device            device UUID
  -h, --help                     show CLI help
  -q, --quiet                    suppress warning messages

DESCRIPTION
  Add an environment or config variable to an application or device, as selected
  by the respective command-line options.

  If VALUE is omitted, the CLI will attempt to use the value of the environment
  variable of same name in the CLI process' environment. In this case, a warning
  message will be printed. Use `--quiet` to suppress it.

  Service-specific variables are not currently supported. The given command line
  examples variables that apply to all services in an app or device.

EXAMPLES
  $ balena env add TERM --application MyApp
  $ balena env add EDITOR vim --application MyApp
  $ balena env add EDITOR vim --device 7cf02a6
3

Hi, is it possible that you are using an older balena cli? I just tried it on 11.25.17 and in that version the --service options is present. Latest version is 12.1.11 so maybe you could just use the latest version?

4

That will probably be it, my version is really quite old (11.18.2) what is the official method of upgrading via NPM? I followed the following docs to install it via NPM. https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli/blob/master/INSTALL.md

5

When you run the cli, it should print in the beginning what is the command to run in order to update

6

It used to do that, but at some point stopped. My guess is that there is an issue with npm that has prevented this from showing up in subsequent versions.

7

Try npm install balena-cli -g

8

This was only possible after sudo npm uninstall -g balena-cli which produced the following output

matthew@thinkpad ~ $ sudo npm uninstall -g balena-cli

> husky@4.2.5 preuninstall /usr/lib/node_modules/balena-cli/node_modules/husky
> node husky uninstall

husky > Uninstalling git hooks
Can't find package.json in /home/matthew directory or parents
Please check that your project has a package.json or create one and reinstall husky.
husky > Failed to uninstall

It would otherwise tell me that balena-cli was present in the filesystem, which is confusing since NPM supposedly managed this package. Either way, I have it sorted out now. I think a better way to handle package management would be nix, since it would solve distro specific problems. I’ll endeavor to demonstrate this in the future.

9

Yeah, that’s why I use the standalone version of the cli