odo url create permanently expands devfile variables

[arthurbarr]

/kind bug

What versions of software are you using?

odo 2.5 on macOS:

odo v2.5.0 (724f16e68)

Server: https://api.arthur3.cp.fyre.ibm.com:6443
Kubernetes: v1.22.3+e790d7f

How did you run odo exactly?

odo url create --port 9443 --secure --container dev

Actual behavior

My devfile.yaml was completely re-written:

1. The order of all the YAML was changed to be alphabetical, which is ugly2.
2. More importantly, all the devfile variables were permanently expanded. e.g. instead of {{liberty-version}}, every occurrence was expanded out to be the value of that variable.3.

Expected behavior

Don't do that. Ideally, leave the whole file alone, except the bit you're adding to. I can maybe manage with everything getting re-ordered, but expanding the variables makes things much harder to maintain.

Any logs, error output, etc?

No.

[kadel]

sadly, this is a "feature" of the Go yaml parser that odo uses.

Currently, there is no way to prevent re-writing the yaml file :-(
We would have to write our own yaml parser from scratch.

[valaparthvi]

Not relevant for v3. Closing it.
/close

[openshift-ci]

@valaparthvi: Closing this issue.

In response to this:

Not relevant for v3. Closing it.
/close

Instructions for interacting with me using PR comments are available here. If you have questions or suggestions related to my behavior, please file an issue against the kubernetes/test-infra repository.

[valaparthvi]

However, this is still relevant for any commands that try to edit the Devfile and we'll be tracking it in #5789.