`GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS` environment variable is ignored

[patricks]

I have upgraded the the plugin from version 0.7.4 to 0.8.1 and since then the upload from our CI pipeline always failed with the following error:

[14:19:23]: App Distribution could not generate credentials from the refresh token specified.

The strange thing is that the plugin tries to use cached Firebase CLI credentials now?

[14:19:23]: 🔐 Authenticating with cached Firebase CLI credentials

which wasn’t the case with version 0.7.4.

[15:23:16]: 🔐 Authenticating with GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable: ./gcloud-api-key.json

Version 0.7.4 used the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, we stored our api-key.json path location there.

It looks like the behavior changed with version 0.8.1.

If I set the api-key.json file via the property service_credentials_file: "./gcloud-api-key.json" everything works fine again. Is the environment variable now ignored?

[tagboola]

Hey @patricks,

It looks like v0.8.0 included a change that modified the order that we check the various login options. Now, we look for cached Firebase CLI credentials before we check application default credentials (i.e. GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS). We should have included this change in the release notes. I've retroactively updated the release notes to note this change.

To fix the issue you're seeing, you can use the service_credentials_file parameter as you mentioned or clear your Firebase CLI credentials on your CI computer by running firebase logout.