What causes "--var '{key}' was supplied more than once" in astrid-runtime/astrid?

Remove the duplicate --var occurrence, keeping only the intended value.

--var '{key}' was supplied more than once

Error message

--var '{key}' was supplied more than once

What it means

validate_values inserts each parsed key into a HashMap; if insert returns Some, the same key appeared in more than one --var flag. Duplicate keys are ambiguous, so the install bails instead of silently last-wins.

Source

Thrown at crates/astrid-cli/src/commands/capsule/install_daemon.rs:420

            .with_context(|| format!("read Capsule.toml from {}", path.display()));
    }
    bail!("source path does not exist: {source}")
}

fn validate_values(
    manifest: &CapsuleManifest,
    items: &[String],
) -> anyhow::Result<Vec<DaemonEnvValue>> {
    let mut parsed = HashMap::new();
    for item in items {
        let (key, value) = item
            .split_once('=')
            .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("--var must be KEY=VALUE (got {item:?})"))?;
        if key.is_empty() || key.contains('\0') || key.contains(':') {
            bail!("--var has an invalid key (got {key:?})");
        }
        if parsed.insert(key.to_owned(), value.to_owned()).is_some() {
            bail!("--var '{key}' was supplied more than once");
        }
    }

    let mut values = Vec::with_capacity(parsed.len());
    for (key, value) in parsed {
        let definition = manifest.env.get(&key).ok_or_else(|| {
            anyhow::anyhow!(
                "--var names no [env] field in {}: {key}",
                manifest.package.name
            )
        })?;
        let kind = if definition.env_type.eq_ignore_ascii_case("secret") {
            if value.len() > 64 * 1024 {
                bail!("secret value for {key} exceeds 65536-byte limit");
            }
            EnvValueKind::Secret
        } else {
            if value.len() > 1 << 20 {

View on GitHub (pinned to affd8760f4)

Solutions

Remove the duplicate --var occurrence, keeping only the intended value.
Deduplicate the key list in your script before building the command.
If you meant to override, decide which value wins and pass it once.

Example fix

// before
--var TOKEN=a --var TOKEN=b
// after
--var TOKEN=b

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

let seen = std::collections::HashSet::new();
for k in keys { assert!(seen.insert(k), "duplicate --var key {k}"); }

Try / catch

on duplicate-key error, de-duplicate the argument list (last-wins intentionally) and re-run once.

Prevention

Build --var flags from a single source of truth (one map/file).
Deduplicate key lists before looping them into flags.
Avoid merging defaults and explicit flags without an override policy.

When it happens

Trigger: Supplying the same env key twice, e.g. --var TOKEN=a --var TOKEN=b, to install_local_via_daemon_for_target_with_generation.

Common situations: Shell scripts appending --var flags in a loop over a list containing duplicate keys; combining a defaults file and explicit flags that both define the same key.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of astrid-runtime/astrid@affd8760f4 (2026-09-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5e2dab2f506ae239. Report an issue: GitHub.