astro:env public variables should not be checked during sync

[Trombach]

Describe the Bug

I'm not sure if it's best to report here or if this is an issue with astro:env.

I've moved my environment setup to astro:env and noticed that my Github action running astro-check started failing. An example can be found here. I would expect for astro-check to only infer the type of my defined variable, but not to require the variables to actually be set.

It's easy enough to work around by just setting the environment variables to something, but it would be nice if we didn't have to for simple CI checks like this.

Steps to Reproduce

1. npm init astro
2. add non optional envField to astro.config, e.g.

schema: {
  PUBLIC_VARIABLE: envField.string({
   context: "server",
   access: "public",
  }),
},

3. run npm run astro check
4. Error!
   The following environment variables do not match the data type and/or properties defined in experimental.env.schema:

Variable PUBLIC_VARIABLE is not of type: string.

Minimal reproduction

https://stackblitz.com/~/github.com/Trombach/astro-check-test

[Princesseuh]

astro check implicitly runs astro sync internally (otherwise in CI environment, you wouldn't have types for content collections and stuff), the issue seems to be in the later command

[github-actions]

Hello @Trombach. Please provide a minimal reproduction using a GitHub repository or StackBlitz. Issues marked with needs repro will be closed if they have no activity within 3 days.

[florian-lefebvre]

I think this is because we check the variables during buildStart, and the vite plugin also runs during astro sync. I think we need a way to know when it's syncing and avoid throwing errors in this case? What do you think @bluwy?

[Trombach]

Thanks for looking into this @Princesseuh and @florian-lefebvre. Yes, I have noticed that astro sync shows the same behaviour and it makes sense it behaves this way. I will send a minimal repro later today

[Trombach]

@florian-lefebvre I've added a stackblitz to the description

[bluwy]

I think this is because we check the variables during buildStart, and the vite plugin also runs during astro sync. I think we need a way to know when it's syncing and avoid throwing errors in this case? What do you think @bluwy?

Sounds ok to me, but I'm not sure how to get that info from a plugin. The way we usually handle types file generation though is directly in the sync command:

astro/packages/astro/src/core/sync/index.ts

Lines 82 to 89 in e67d7e6

	try {
	await dbPackage?.typegen?.(astroConfig);
	const exitCode = await syncContentCollections(settings, { ...options, logger });
	if (exitCode !== 0) return exitCode;
	logger.info(null, `Types generated ${dim(getTimeStat(timerStart, performance.now()))}`);
	return 0;
	} catch (err) {

So perhaps we should move the env generation there? And the plugin shouldn't be generating any files.