`api.JobSubmission` only includes untyped `-var` and `-var-file` content

[the-nando]

Nomad version

Nomad v1.7.7
BuildDate 2024-04-16T19:26:43Z
Revision 0f34c85ee63f6472bd2db1e2487611f4b176c70

Issue

The Nomad API endpoint to retrieve a job submission assumes all HCL2 variables submitted with a job to be of type string: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/release/1.7.7/api/jobs.go#L929

This causes problems in the UI when editing the Job Spec of a submitted job whose variables are of types other than string. A list is rendered in the UI as:

datacenters="["dc-1a","dc-1b","dc-1c"]"

And it will cause the following error when attempting to plan the edited job from the UI:

The E2E tests follow the same behaviour by expecting all types (string, int, bool) to be serialised as string: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/release/1.7.7/e2e/jobsubmissions/input/xyz.hcl#L9 https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/v1.7.7/e2e/jobsubmissions/jobsubapi_test.go#L85

If I edit the variables in the UI to the correct type and submit the job they are then returned by the API, with the correct type, as Variables instead of VariableFlags

Reproduction steps

Submit a job with a -var file containing a variable of type list(string). Open the UI, edit the HCL Job Spec and submit the job.

Expected Result

The job is submitted and the variable is returned by the API with the correct type.

Actual Result

The variable is casted to string and the submit fails.