spring.profiles.included not permitted in externalized non-profile-specific properties

[konradczajka]

This issue relates highly to Spring Cloud Config but was introduced directly by changes made in #24733 (released in Spring Boot 2.4.2) so I report it here. I'll move it to SCC if needed.

In my current setup I share some common configuration between applications using profiles.
Configuration repository contains application.yml file with properties shared among all apps. There are also additional application-xxx.yml files containing properties shared by a subset of services e.g. application-rabbitmq.yml
App-specific, but not profile-specific files (e.g. calculator.yml) declares spring.profiles.include=rabbitmq property with all profiles that should be used to retrieve given app's config. All apps are started without marking any profiles as active/included.
This approach seems to be supported by Spring Cloud Config Server as well as when I request some app's config using the default profile (<config-server-uri>/calculator/default) in response I receive "main" files: application.yml, calculator.yml, as well as files specific to the declared profile: application-rabbitmq.yml. When I change spring.profiles.include in application.yml to other value, application-rabbitmq.yml is not included anymore. This means SCCS recognizes this property and takes it into account when determining which properties files should be returned.

Now to the main problem - the setup described above works well with Spring Boot 2.4.1 but has stopped after the upgrade to 2.4.2.
Now the client app crashes at startup with:

16:43:55.562 [main] ERROR org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication - Application run failed
org.springframework.boot.context.config.InvalidConfigDataPropertyException: Property 'spring.profiles.include' imported from location '[ConfigServerConfigDataResource@e84a8e1 uris = array<String>['http://localhost:8888'], optional = false, profiles = list['default']]' is invalid in a profile specific resource [origin: Config Server (snip)/calculator.yml:3:14]

InvalidConfigDataPropertyException throws an exception during processing of ConfigDataEnvironmentContributor instance responsible for handling cloud config server as a source. The contributor is marked as "profileSpecific" and therefore it's forbidden for it to contain "profiles properties".
When I move spring.profiles.include from calculator.yml to application.yml the app crashes as well.
I don't know what exactly causes the contributor to be marked as "profileSpecific". Spring Cloud Config Client makes a request to the Spring Cloud Config Server using "default" as profile name when the app was started without any profile, The response from the server looks like this:

    (...)
    "profiles": [
        "default"
    ],
    (...)
   "propertySources": [
        {
            "name": "(snip)/calculator.yml",
            "source": {
                (...)
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "(snip)/application-rabbitmq.yml",
            "source": {
                (...)
            }
        },
        {
            "name": "(snip)/application.yml",
            "source": {
                (...)
            }
        }
    ],

I created a simple repository with config server that presents the problem. It's even more simplified then the description above as configuration served by SCCS doesn't include an application-specific files, just appplication.yml and application-demo.yml:
https://github.com/konradczajka/cloud-config-profile-issue-demo

In my opinion it should be permitted to specify profiles in an external configuration as long as particular file is not profile-specific but I'm aware that there may be a good reason for forbidding that. I'd just like to know if that's a case and I'll just look for other solution to my sharing problem. And if It's not advised to include any profiles-related properties in any file served by SCCS then maybe its documentation should mention it.

Regards.

[philwebb]

I've digged a bit and I think a change will be needed to Spring Cloud. I've opened spring-cloud/spring-cloud-config#1788.