Description
🐛 Bug Report
It is not possible for a test to set the process environment as node_modules/jest-util/build/installCommonGlobals.js runs node_modules/jest-util/build/createProcessObject.js createProcessEnv() which replaces the real process.env with a fake one. This means that tests cannot communicate with binary/native modules via the environment.
My specific use case is, in a nodejs jest test, a need to set KRB5_CONFIG in the real process environment prior to interacting with the native library MIT krb5 via https://www.npmjs.com/package/gssapi.js.
To Reproduce
Rather than my use case, which requires a third-party binary node module, I will just provide a repro case that uses standard node modules. This example require a system with a bash shell, where it will write output: bar to standard output.
const child = require("child_process");
process.env.foo = "bar";
child.exec("echo -n $foo", (err, stdout, stderr) => {
console.log(`output: ${stdout}`);
});
If this code is instead moved into a jest test it will just write output: to standard output as the foo variable will only have been set in the jest fake process.env, not in the real (OS level) process environment, so it is not inherited by the process that we start.
In this repro case you can of course just pass the env explicitly as an option to child_process.exec(), but that is besides the point. The point is that process.env changes do not update the real system/OS-level process environment, which prevents communication via the process environment to binary modules.