Can not deploy to Rinkeby via truffle - cannot read property 'bind'

Question

I am using truffle: "^4.1.14" and ganache-cli version "^6.1.8". When I try to migrate to ganache cli network, it works without a problem. But when I try to migrate to Rinkeby, it always fails. The error message says TypeError: Cannot read property 'bind' of undefined. The problematic line is buried somewhere deep in webpack, and I can't get to that script to inspect it or console.log it.

The relevant part of truffle.js looks like this

rinkeby_infura: {
      provider: function() {        
        // using process.env.MNENOMIC would be safer, but this is test project
        const mnemonic = require('./.mnemonic');
        const apiKey = require('./.infura_api_key');
        return new HdWalletProvider(mnemonic, 'https://rinkeby.infura.io/' + apiKey);
      },
      network_id: 4,      
      gas: 4612388 // Gas limit used for deploys
    },

The full stack trace of the exception is below. It probably has something to do with connecting to Rinkeby via provider, at least from what I've googled so far. But I am unable to make it work.

$ ./node_modules/.bin/truffle migrate --network rinkeby_infura

C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-provider\wrapper.js:26
    var originalSendAsync = provider.sendAsync.bind(provider);
^
TypeError: Cannot read property 'bind' of undefined
    at Object.wrap (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-provider\wrapper.js:26:1)
    at Object.wrap (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-provider\index.js:7:1)
    at Object.create (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-provider\index.js:21:1)
    at Config.get [as provider] (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-config\index.js:165:1)
    at Object.detect (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-core\lib\environment.js:46:1)
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-core\lib\commands\migrate.js:91:1
    at finished (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-workflow-compile\index.js:53:1)
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-compile\index.js:314:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-compile\profiler.js:158:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:3888:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:473:1
    at replenish (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:1006:1)
    at iterateeCallback (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:995:1)
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:969:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:3885:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-compile\profiler.js:154:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:1140:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:473:1
    at iteratorCallback (C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:1064:1)
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:969:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\~\async\dist\async.js:1137:1
    at C:\src\personal\ens-registrar\node_modules\truffle\build\webpack:\packages\truffle-compile\profiler.js:133:1
    at FSReqWrap.oncomplete (fs.js:155:5)

Answer 1

In my opinion Truffle is having trouble opening your mnemonic / Infura API key files. Is it working if you use directly the mnemonic and the API key instead of the variables?

Also I recommend you to use dotenv and process.env (even with a test project), it would be easier to handle future updates!

Answer 2

What are the files for the environment variables? If they are just plain text, you may need to fix that. You could just create a single json or js file, add the vars as key/value pairs and export it.