AL-Go projects with large amounts of apps will fill up the environment variable

[aholstrup1]

❔What, Why & How

Repro steps:

1. Create an AL-Go project with a large amount of apps
2. Create another AL-Go project where some apps have dependencies on the apps in step 1

AL-Go will run the CI/CD in two phases. It will build a lot of apps in the first phase, and then in phase 2 those apps will downloaded as part of the "Download Project Dependencies" action. Here, AL-Go constructs a list of apps and then outputs that list. Once we start the "RunPipeline" action those lists of apps will be added as an environment variable. Once that happens we get:

Error: Unexpected error when running action. Error Message: The environment block used to start a process cannot be longer than 65535 bytes.  Your environment block is 67479 bytes long.  Remove some environment variables and try again.

If you have a lot of apps, this list will very quickly become quite large and will therefore fill up the environment block.

Proposed Solution:
Write the lists to files in a temporary folder and read the lists from those files instead of making them environment variables.

✅ Checklist

• Add tests (E2E, unit tests)
• Update RELEASENOTES.md
• Update documentation (e.g. for new settings or scenarios)
• Add telemetry

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR addresses an issue where AL-Go projects with large numbers of apps would exceed the 65,535 byte environment variable limit during CI/CD workflows. The solution changes the approach from passing large JSON-formatted app lists as environment variables to writing them as files in temporary folders and passing file paths instead.

Key changes:

• Modified DownloadProjectDependencies to write downloaded app lists to temporary JSON files instead of returning JSON strings
• Updated RunPipeline to read app lists from file paths instead of parsing JSON strings from parameters
• Updated documentation to reflect that parameters now accept file paths instead of JSON strings

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
RELEASENOTES.md	Added release note documenting the fix for large environment variable issue
Actions/RunPipeline/action.yaml	Changed input descriptions and defaults to indicate file paths instead of JSON strings
Actions/RunPipeline/RunPipeline.ps1	Added logic to read app lists from files when paths are provided
Actions/RunPipeline/README.md	Updated documentation to reflect file path inputs
Actions/DownloadProjectDependencies/DownloadProjectDependencies.Action.ps1	Changed to write app lists to temporary files and output file paths

---

💡 Add Copilot custom instructions for smarter, more guided reviews. Learn how to get started.

You can also share your feedback on Copilot code review for a chance to win a $100 gift card. Take the survey.

[mazhelez]

Looks good. Just one more iteration.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

---

💡 Add Copilot custom instructions for smarter, more guided reviews. Learn how to get started.

[mazhelez]

⚠️ Release Notes Update Reminder

Thank you for updating the release notes!

Please ensure that your changes are placed above the new version section (currently ## v8.1) in the RELEASENOTES.md file.

This helps maintain a clear changelog structure where new changes are grouped under the latest unreleased version.