Installations paths in settings

[AFulgens]

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/blob/master/doc/Settings.md tells me that I can define installations paths for (non-)portable installations with

"installBehavior": {
    "portablePackageUserRoot": "C:/Users/FooBar/Packages",
    "portablePackageMachineRoot": "C:/Program Files/Packages/Portable"
},

The documentation also tells me that these must be absolute paths (totally legitimate restriction), with defaulting to %LOCALAPPDATA%/Microsoft/WinGet/Packages/ and %PROGRAMFILES%/WinGet/Packages/ respectively, in case they are not defined.

Thus, I conclude that I can use CMD-style variables in the paths, i.e., I would expect %USERPROFILE%/.winget/ to work.

Alas, it results in a validation failure:

PS C:\Users\FooBar> winget settings
Unexpected error while loading settings. Please verify your settings by running the 'settings' command.
The following failures were found validating the settings:
Invalid field value. Field: .installBehavior.defaultInstallRoot Value: %USERPROFILE%/.winget/
Invalid field value. Field: .installBehavior.portablePackageUserRoot Value: %USERPROFILE%/.winget/

Either the documentation should say that it must be an absolute path and no variables are allowed, or winget should dereference variables.

Am I missing something here?

[Gijsreyn]

@AFulgens I was just about to add it to the documentation when I put on my glasses. It's there:

[AFulgens]

It is there that it must be an absolute path.

If I have an envrionment variable via

SET test="C:/Program Files/Packages/Portable"

then %test% is an absolute path.

My problem is that %USERPROFILE%/.winget/ defines by definition an absolute path (C:/<Users>/<Current Username>/.winget, whereby <Current Username> is resolved, as well as <Users> to be the local-correct alias). What the problem is that (environment) variables are not resolved, even though the documentation hints at this with %PROGRAMFILES% being in the "if value is not set".

To quote from my original post:

Either the documentation should say that it must be an absolute path and no variables are allowed, or winget should dereference variables.

[Gijsreyn]

I got you wrong; now I understand.