Enable or Disable Remote Cache Based on Environment in Moon

[jcommuri]

Scenario:
We have a remote cache server configured, and we want to use the remote cache only for CI builds while preferring local caching for local development.

Method 1:
To achieve this, I attempted to use the MOON_REMOTE_HOST and MOON_REMOTE_API environment variables.

Example:
Environment Variables Set:
$env:MOON_REMOTE_HOST = "grpc://localhost:9092"
$env:MOON_REMOTE_API = "grpc"

On CI: Moon does not attempt to connect to the remote cache server and instead defaults to using the local cache. (Not Ok)
On Local: Moon uses the local cache as these variables are not set. (Ok)

Method 2:
I tried adding the following configuration in workspace.yml:

unstable_remote:
  host: ${MOON_REMOTE_HOST}

On CI: Works fine as the MOON_REMOTE_HOST environment variable is set. (Ok)
On Local: The MOON_REMOTE_HOST environment variable is not present, and Moon throws a validation error because the host field requires a value. (Not Ok)

Question:
Is there a recommended way to configure Moon to use the remote cache only in CI while defaulting to local caching for local development? Any solutions or workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

I am using Moon version: 1.34.2

Thanks

[milesj]

@jcommuri Setting MOON_REMOTE_HOST is the correct way, it's weird this doesn't work, as I just tested it locally.

Does --log trace show anything useful?

[milesj]

Ah yeah that's it. If you're not configuring anything at all, the "settings block" isn't registered, so the env vars don't even get inherited. Let me think about this, may have to rework some stuff.

[sharpepd]

Thanks. Maybe another env var could unblock it like MOON_REMOTE_ENABLE? This would be acceptable to me if that makes sense to you and is easy to implement.

[jcommuri]

Hello @milesj,
Do you happen to have an estimated timeline for this implementation ?

[milesj]

This should work now in 1.36 by just setting MOON_REMOTE_HOST.

[jcommuri]

Thanks @milesj