Bug: Conda activation on Windows fails due to bash-incompatible 3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE env var; adaptor depends on legacy name

[oehmends]

Describe the bug

On Windows workers, conda environment activation is executed via bash (MSYS/Git-Bash), not cmd.exe or PowerShell. This causes activation to fail when attempting to export environment variables whose names start with a digit, such as 3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE.

POSIX shells do not allow exporting variables that begin with a number. As a result, .sh activation scripts cannot set 3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE, which leads to missing configuration during runtime.

This issue is already partially documented in the samples repository, where a workaround is required to hotpatch executable_handler.py inside the conda environment to fall back to ADSK-prefixed variables. However, this dependency is fragile and easy to miss.

Expected Behaviour

• Conda environments should activate successfully on Windows workers.
• The adaptor should resolve the 3ds Max executable correctly regardless of whether activation happens via bash or Windows-native shells.
• No manual hotpatching of adaptor code inside a conda environment should be required.

Current Behaviour

• .sh activation scripts cannot export 3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE.
• Bash-based activation therefore relies on ADSK-prefixed variables.
• The adaptor still depends on 3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE unless manually patched.
• This results in runtime failures or undocumented manual steps.

This is the hot patch I'm currently running successfully:

I agree that we should probably allow more env vars to not break backwards compatibility with current work configuration scripts. For example:
max_exe_path = ( environ.get("ADSK_3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE") or environ.get("3DSMAX_EXECUTABLE") or "3dsmax" )

Reproduction Steps

This can be reproduced by using the conda recipe: aws-deadline/deadline-cloud-samples#173

Environment

See above PR to replicate the environment. I've used

1. Windows SMF on Deadline Cloud
2. 3ds Max 2025.3

[oehmends]

Please see the README in the PR in the deadline-cloud-samples repo mentioning this issue: https://github.com/aws-deadline/deadline-cloud-samples/pull/173/files#r2702394784

[leongdl]

Thank you - currently we do not officially support 3dsmax via service managed Conda, but your callout is great. I have also seen your pull request and will review this.

[leongdl]

Yes I agree with your patch image above - we need to support backwards compatibility and can source ENV_VAR_1 or ENV_VAR_2 type of setting.

Would you like to submit a patch for review?

[oehmends]

Yes I agree with your patch image above - we need to support backwards compatibility and can source ENV_VAR_1 or ENV_VAR_2 type of setting.

Would you like to submit a patch for review?

Hi @leongdl - sure, happy to submit a PR!

[leongdl]

Yes I agree with your patch image above - we need to support backwards compatibility and can source ENV_VAR_1 or ENV_VAR_2 type of setting.
Would you like to submit a patch for review?

Hi @leongdl - sure, happy to submit a PR!

Awesome, thank you for the contribution!

[github-actions]

Greetings! It looks like this issue hasn’t been active in more than five days. We encourage you to check if this is still an issue in the latest release. In the absence of more information, we will be closing this issue soon. If you find that this is still a problem, please feel free to provide a comment or upvote with a reaction on the initial post to prevent automatic closure. If the issue is already closed, please feel free to open a new one.