bug(run): pixi run echo '{{ hello }}' fails

[borchero]

Checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pixi, using pixi --version.

Reproducible example

The issue from #4432 has surfaced again in pixi v0.63.2.

Command:

pixi run echo '{{ hello }}'

Output:

Error:   × failed to replace argument placeholders
   ╭────
 1 │ 'echo' '{{ hello }}'
   ·            ──┬──
   ·              ╰── this part can't be replaced
   ╰────

Issue description

No response

Expected behavior

The command should run through with the following output:

{{ hello }}

[pavelzw]

@tdejager

[RaphaelRibes]

I was playing with environment variable the other day and you can technically do MSG='{{ hello }}' pixi run echo $MSG to bypass the formatting of MiniJinja doing so, but well... it's a really junky way of doing that.

[pavelzw]

That doesn't work for our use case. We are using lefthook which generates these arguments dynamically

[ruben-arts]

With the vision on the future where we'll probably add more "things" to the jinja templating, should we just implement a way to ignore this format or actually not allow the template usages in the pixi run?

I can see value in running pixi run echo {{ pixi.platform }} and wanting the template to render.

What you often see to ignore it would be {{{{ renders to {{ or some other methode.

[borchero]

I personally find it rather unexpected that a command passes through a templating engine; would it make sense to enable this feature conditionally, e.g. via something like pixi run --templated echo '{{ pixi.platform }}'?

[pavelzw]

as this is a very rare use case, i would be fine with not having this as the default as @borchero suggested. So something like pixi run --no-template 'echo {{ hello }}' would also be fine for me. This only occurs to me when i work on copier templates.

What you often see to ignore it would be {{{{ renders to {{ or some other methods.

This won't work because we can't (or don't want to) control lefthook's behavior on that front.

[RaphaelRibes]

I personally find it rather unexpected that a command passes through a templating engine; would it make sense to enable this feature conditionally, e.g. via something like pixi run --templated echo '{{ pixi.platform }}'?

I would make sense that it is automatically templated in tasks in the manifest but since you cannot define arguments in cli, there is just no use to have it. About pixi.platform, we could just us environment variable and it'll be fine I think.

[ruben-arts]

Considering these things I would like to see pixi run --templated echo {{ pixi.platform }} to work. And then default to not having the templating active. I'm assuming it's technically not much harder to implement.

Open to PR's to change this behavior and add the flag.

[pavelzw]

what other variables besides pixi.platform would you envision? (how) should it be possible to define those variables? nvm they are already available 👍🏻