jj confused if /etc/passwd does not contain the current username

[marco-m-pix4d]

Description

This is somehow a corner case, but here it goes. I started seeing this happening with 0.25. I think that before this was not a problem.

jj fails the majority of commands if /etc/passwd does not contain the current username

What is peculiar about my setup is that this is a Linux VM provided by a VMWare system called VDI, which has LDAP integration, so that /etc/passwd is missing the username. I believe that this is the cause.

Steps to Reproduce the Problem

1. Remove the line with your username from /etc/passwd
2. Run any command, it doesn't matter if inside or outside a repo.

Expected Behavior

Outside a repo:

$ jj st
Error: There is no jj repo in "."

Actual Behavior

$ jj st
Config error: Invalid type or value for operation.username
Caused by: Null record
For help, see https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/config/.

This becomes nasty for example:

$ jj config edit --user
Config error: Invalid type or value for operation.username
Caused by: Null record
For help, see https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/config/.

Workaround

This took me a while to figure out, because https://jj-vcs.github.io/jj/latest/config doesn't mention operation. I found only one mention in the CHANGELOG.

Add to ~/.config/jj/config.toml:

[operation]
username = "something"

Additional comments

I love jj! Thanks!

Specifications

• Platform: Linux Ubuntu 22.04, VDI VMWare, LDAP integration that overrides /etc/passwd
• Version: 0.25

[martinvonz]

This sounds like a duplicate of #5231. You can try building from source after #5247, or wait for 0.26 (early February).

[marco-m-pix4d]

Ah! You are right. I completely missed that! 🤦 Thanks.