bug: GOROOT not propagated into agent container despite --env-all and spec §8.5

[yskopets]

Summary

GOROOT is not present in the agent container's environment even when actions/setup-go runs as a step before Execute Claude Code CLI, despite awf being invoked with --env-all.

The security architecture spec §8.5 (Environment Variable Inheritance) explicitly states:

GOROOT explicitly captured after actions/setup-go (Go's trimmed binaries require it)

In practice, GOROOT is empty inside the container.

Example configuration

steps:
  - name: Set up Go
    id: setup-go
    uses: actions/setup-go@4a3601121dd01d1626a1e23e37211e3254c1c06c # v6
    with:
      go-version-file: './go.mod' # use a value other than `'go.mod'` to prevent `gh aw compile` from dropping this `actions/setup-go` step as a duplicate of its internal one
      cache: false

  - name: Restore GOTOOLCHAIN=auto
    run: echo "GOTOOLCHAIN=auto" >> $GITHUB_ENV

Observed behavior

After actions/setup-go runs on the runner and exports:

• GOROOT=/opt/hostedtoolcache/go/<version>/x64
• GOTOOLCHAIN=local

Inside the agent container:

GOROOT=          ← empty, not forwarded
GOTOOLCHAIN=auto ← forwarded correctly (after overriding to auto via $GITHUB_ENV)

The awf invocation uses --env-all, so all runner env vars should be forwarded. GOTOOLCHAIN is forwarded but GOROOT is not.

Impact

The intended PATH fixup in the container entry command is silently skipped:

[ -n "$GOROOT" ] && export PATH="$GOROOT/bin:$PATH" || true

Because GOROOT is empty, the correct Go version is not prepended to PATH. The fallback find /opt/hostedtoolcache -maxdepth 4 -type d -name bin adds all Go versions to PATH, but in an uncontrolled order — which go resolves to an older pre-installed version rather than the one installed by actions/setup-go.

Correct version selection still works incidentally when GOTOOLCHAIN=auto is set (Go auto-downloads the right version), but the GOROOT-based mechanism is broken and the spec guarantee is not met.

Steps to reproduce

1. Add actions/setup-go as a step in a gh-aw workflow
2. Run the workflow
3. Inside the agent, run: echo "GOROOT=${GOROOT}" — the value is empty

Expected behavior

GOROOT should be forwarded into the agent container as specified in §8.5, so that:

1. The PATH fixup $GOROOT/bin:$PATH correctly prepends the setup-go-installed version
2. Go's runtime has a valid GOROOT if needed (e.g. for trimmed binaries using runtime.GOROOT())

Environment

• gh-aw version: v0.65.7
• awf version: v0.25.13

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🤖 This issue was filed by Claude Code (claude-sonnet-4-6).

[pelikhan]

@Mossaka