Heroku Unable to Properly Use NPM_CONFIG variable at deploy

Question

I am using a private package from GitHub. When attempting to deploy, Heroku ignores my .npmrc file configs.

Locally, my environment file looks like:

NPM_CONFIG_GITHUB_TOKEN=[token]

Then, my .npmrc file looks like this:

[username]:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=$GITHUB_TOKEN

With this configuration, I'm able to run this locally just fine. In Heroku, I get the following error:

-----> Node.js app detected
       
-----> Creating runtime environment
       
       NPM_CONFIG_LOGLEVEL=error
       NPM_CONFIG_GITHUB_TOKEN=[token]
       NODE_ENV=production
       NODE_MODULES_CACHE=true
       NODE_VERBOSE=false
       
-----> Installing binaries
       engines.node (package.json):  12.13.x
       engines.npm (package.json):   unspecified (use default)
       
       Resolving node version 12.13.x...
       Downloading and installing node 12.13.1
       Using default npm version: 6.12.1
       
-----> Restoring cache
       Cached directories were not restored due to a change in version of node, npm, yarn or stack
       Module installation may take longer for this build
       
-----> Installing dependencies
       Installing node modules
       npm ERR! code E401
       npm ERR! 401 Unauthorized - GET https://npm.pkg.github.com/download/[package]
       
       npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
       npm ERR!     /tmp/npmcache.P5iPk/_logs/2020-08-03T18_44_16_744Z-debug.log
-----> Build failed

The full logs say the same thing. However, if I change .npmrc to:

[username]:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
//npm.pkg.github.com/:_authToken=${GITHUB_TOKEN}

... It work just fine in Heroku, but breaks locally.

Can anyone offer some guidance on what I'm doing wrong here? I've researched this for hours with no success. While the obvious solution is a different local version, this is an opensource project and I want to be able to provide straightforward installation directions.

Answer 1

When I deploy to Heroku I usually set the environment variables in my app settings on Heroku and I've never had a problem, you could try that