Android keystore Short read of DER length

I'm trying to use gitlab ci/cd for my android project. I created the pipeline but i'm facing this error that says "Short read of DER length" for my keystore (jks) file. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. All the examples showing the exact pipeline.

this the pipeline:

image: openjdk:11-jdk

variables:

  # ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK is the version of Android you're compiling with.
  # It should match compileSdkVersion.
  ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK: "32"

  # ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS is the version of the Android build tools you are using.
  # It should match buildToolsVersion.
  ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS: "33.0.0"

  # It's what version of the command line tools we're going to download from the official site.
  # Official Site-> https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html
  # There, look down below at the cli tools only, sdk tools package is of format:
  #        commandlinetools-os_type-ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS_latest.zip
  # when the script was last modified for latest compileSdkVersion, it was which is written down below
  ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS: "8512546"

# Packages installation before running script
before_script:
  - apt-get --quiet update --yes
  - apt-get --quiet install --yes wget tar unzip lib32stdc++6 lib32z1

  # Setup path as ANDROID_HOME for moving/exporting the downloaded sdk into it
  - export ANDROID_HOME="${PWD}/android-home"
  # Create a new directory at specified location
  - install -d $ANDROID_HOME
  # Here we are installing androidSDK tools from official source,
  # (the key thing here is the url from where you are downloading these sdk tool for command line, so please do note this url pattern there and here as well)
  # after that unzipping those tools and
  # then running a series of SDK manager commands to install necessary android SDK packages that'll allow the app to build
  - wget --output-document=$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools.zip https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-${ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS}_latest.zip
  # move to the archive at ANDROID_HOME
  - pushd $ANDROID_HOME
  - unzip -d cmdline-tools cmdline-tools.zip
  - pushd cmdline-tools
  # since commandline tools version 7583922 the root folder is named "cmdline-tools" so we rename it if necessary
  - mv cmdline-tools tools || true
  - popd
  - popd
  - export PATH=$PATH:${ANDROID_HOME}/cmdline-tools/tools/bin/

  # Nothing fancy here, just checking sdkManager version
  - sdkmanager --version

  # use yes to accept all licenses
  - yes | sdkmanager --licenses || true
  - sdkmanager "platforms;android-${ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK}"
  - sdkmanager "platform-tools"
  - sdkmanager "build-tools;${ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS}"

  # Not necessary, but just for surity
  - chmod +x ./gradlew



stages:
  - build
  - test

# lintDebug:
#   stage: build
#   script:
#     - ./gradlew clean
#     - ./gradlew -Pci --stacktrace --warning-mode=all --console=plain :app:lintDebug -PbuildDir=lint

assembleRelease:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo -n ${KEY_STORE_FILE} | base64 -d > straiberry.keystore
    - echo "storeFile=../straiberry.keystore" >> keystore.properties
    - echo "storePassword=${STORE_PASSWORD}" >> keystore.properties
    - echo "keyAlias=${KEY_ALIAS}" >> keystore.properties
    - echo "keyPassword=${KEY_PASSWORD}" >> keystore.properties
    - ./gradlew clean --stacktrace --warning-mode=all
    - ./gradlew assembleRelease --stacktrace --warning-mode=all
  artifacts:
    paths:
    - straiberry.keystore
    - keystore.properties
    - app/release

# debugTests:
#   stage: test
#   script:
#     - ./gradlew -Pci --console=plain :app:testDebug

I encrypted my keystore to base64 and save it in gitlab variables with type of file.

But i'm facing this error:

Caused by: com.android.ide.common.signing.KeytoolException: Failed to read key  from store "/builds/straiberry/client-apps/android-app/straiberry.keystore": Short read of DER length

Solution

The problem was the variables in gitlab ci/cd was protected. When variables are protected only the protected branch can read them. My branch wasn't protected so variables was empty when calling them.