use token file path with Fulcio and fix unused var

[jkhelil]

Unit tests are failing for fulcio,
I don’t fully understand all the downstream impacts here, but I do understand the root issue. With GPT’s help, I was able to fix it to unblock the release.
Could someone with Fulcio expertise please review and validate this change?

➜  chains git:(main) ✗ go test -v -run "^TestCreateSignerFulcioEnabled$" ./pkg/chains/signing/x509/
=== RUN   TestCreateSignerFulcioEnabled
    logger.go:146: 2025-11-04T20:58:26.666+0100	INFO	x509/x509.go:99	Attempting to get id token from provider filesystem-custom-path
    logger.go:146: 2025-11-04T20:58:26.666+0100	INFO	x509/x509.go:116	Signing with fulcio ...
    x509_test.go:101: Error from NewSigner: new signer: reading id token: getting id token: open eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE2Nzc1NjAyMTgsImV4cCI6MTY3NzU2MzgxOCwiaXNzIjoidXNlcjEyMyJ9.c-sDgCyuZA6VaIGl7Y3-9XxttW1PUkBeNBLE9gCKG8s: no such file or directory
    x509_test.go:110: new signer: reading id token: getting id token: open eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE2Nzc1NjAyMTgsImV4cCI6MTY3NzU2MzgxOCwiaXNzIjoidXNlcjEyMyJ9.c-sDgCyuZA6VaIGl7Y3-9XxttW1PUkBeNBLE9gCKG8s: no such file or directory
--- FAIL: TestCreateSignerFulcioEnabled (0.00s)
FAIL
FAIL	github.com/tektoncd/chains/pkg/chains/signing/x509	2.358s
FAIL

This PR fixes Fulcio token handling in pkg/chains/signing/x509/x509.go where a raw JWT string could be treated as a filesystem path, causing file-open errors during signer initialization.

• When signers.x509.identity.token.file is set, pass the file path via options.KeyOpts.IDToken so Fulcio reads the token from disk.
• Treat providers as enabled when a token file is provided; only validate a provider when explicitly set.
• Let Fulcio handle token acquisition (providers/env/OIDC) when no token file is specified.
• Clean up unused variable and related assignments.

Co-authored-by: GPT-5

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[anithapriyanatarajan]

@jkhelil x509_test.go:101: Error from NewSigner: new signer: reading id token: getting id token: open eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE2Nzc1NjAyMTgsImV4cCI6MTY3NzU2MzgxOCwiaXNzIjoidXNlcjEyMyJ9.c-sDgCyuZA6VaIGl7Y3-9XxttW1PUkBeNBLE9gCKG8s: no such file or directory this error could be attributed to #1441 that involved a bump of cosign from 2.5.3 to 2.6.0. This has introduced a new auth flow at here.

// idToken allows users to either pass in an identity token directly
// or a path to an identity token via the --identity-token flag
func idToken(s string) (string, error) {
	// If this is a valid raw token or is empty, just return it
	if _, err := jwt.ParseSigned(s, []jose.SignatureAlgorithm{"RS256"}); err == nil || s == "" {
		return s, nil
	}

	// Otherwise, if this is a path to a token return the contents
	c, err := os.ReadFile(s)
	return string(c), err
}

Either the function should be enhanced to accept other signing algorithms or should be made configurable, considering the PQC algorithms we may have to support. The failing test case uses -a HS256 . To get past this immediately we could update the test case by generating a RS256 algorithm token. As a long term fix, the above mentioned function cosign should be refactored to handle token failures and file path handling in a better way.

If updating the token to RS algorithm works, Ideally we do not need the logic change in x509.go since the code relies on the provider abstraction p, err := providers.ProvideFrom(ctx, cfg.FulcioProvider) which should be fine.

Submitted PR #1464 with the token change for reference.