issue #7302 : Start Action fails when there is a space in the name of the Action via the Docker container

[mattcasters]

Walkthrough - Fixing Docker variable quoting for HOP_START_ACTION

This walkthrough describes the root cause and the fix for the issue where using HOP_START_ACTION with spaces in the Docker container fails.

Root Cause Analysis

In docker/resources/load-and-execute.sh, options were concatenated into a single string variable HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS:

HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS="${HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS} --startaction=${HOP_START_ACTION}"

When executing the underlying hop-run.sh or hop command, ${HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS} was passed unquoted to allow multiple flags to be passed as separate arguments:

"${DEPLOYMENT_PATH}"/hop-run.sh \
  --file="${HOP_FILE_PATH}" \
  --runconfig="${HOP_RUN_CONFIG}" \
  --parameters="${HOP_RUN_PARAMETERS}" \
  ${HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS} \
  ...

Due to the lack of quoting around ${HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS}, the shell performed word splitting on whitespace. If HOP_START_ACTION contained spaces (e.g. "My Fancy Action"), the parameter was split into multiple arguments: --startaction=My, Fancy, and Action.

Implementation Details

To properly preserve spaces in arguments, HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS was converted into a Bash array (HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS=()).

Options are now appended to the array:

• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--level=${HOP_LOG_LEVEL}")
• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--system-properties=${HOP_SYSTEM_PROPERTIES}")
• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--project=${HOP_PROJECT_NAME}")
• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--environment=${HOP_ENVIRONMENT_NAME}")
• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--metadata-export=${HOP_RUN_METADATA_EXPORT}")
• HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS+=("--startaction=${HOP_START_ACTION}")

When executing downstream scripts, the array is expanded with quotes "${HOP_EXEC_OPTIONS[@]}", which correctly preserves each option (including those with spaces) as a single distinct argument.

Modified Files

• load-and-execute.sh

Testing

Ran integration-tests/scripts/run-tests-docker.sh PROJECT_NAME=actions to make sure the old behavior still works as expected.