Better bash workaround

[ledjon]

The bash workaround documented in the README talks about reading in the file and (re)-exporting the variables (lines in the file) 1-by-1. There is an easier/cleaner/more-correct solution that still allows comments in the .env file (i.e., treats it like bash script still). Basically you use set -a which will treat all variables that are set as exports. The second set +a disables this behavior for the rest of the script (back to default behavior)

.env:

# this comment is fine
FOO=bar
VERSION=1.2

set-env.sh

set -a
. .env
set +a

See SF post on similar topic: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/79084

Just thought I'd pass this along for other users that think the solution in the README is just a little bit too hacky 😄

[cadethacker]

This solution above is nice! Here is what I came up with. Might be helpful to somebody, so I'll leave it here. I also ran into some slight issues with the bash example.

Issue 1: the env file can't have double quotes on the value. In the example:

SECRET_KEY="hip-hip-env-files"

This resulted in an env var of:

declare -x SECRET_KEY="\"hip-hip-env-files\""

So I stripped out all the double quotes.

SECRET_KEY=hip-hip-env-files

which resulted in

declare -x SECRET_KEY="hip-hip-env-files"

Issue 2: Blank and Commented out (#) lines cause issues

If any of the lines are commented out, or just blank newlines, it ran export which dumped all my env vars to my screen. I fixed that with:

while read -r line; do
  [[ $line =~ ^#.* ]] && continue
  [ -z $line ] && continue
  export $line;
done < .env

[ashald]

Thanks for tips! Would welcome a PR to docs!

[nicchristeller]

Another option, which I'm using because my .env has if[]s and other structures that don't parse nicely.

1. Add a "Shell script" run configuration, with "script text" = source .env; env > temp_captured_env_vars
2. Add a "before launch task" to my actual run configuration that executes the above shell script
3. Use this plugin to load temp_captured_env_vars

Instead of attempting to parse the bash file, just execute it to export whatever variables it likes and load all environment variables to a temporary file, which the plugin can handle as a .env file. This works fairly seamlessly - it will pick up changes to the bash file when you run your application, and the bash file doesn't need any particular structure or care.

WARNINGS/notes:

• this loads all env vars to a temporary file. You should probably be careful not to commit this file (make sure it's gitignored or similar, or in a different directory)
• the first time you run, the plugin complains that it can't find your temporary file. Just run again, and it will work.

[ashald]

the first time you run, the plugin complains that it can't find your temporary file. Just run again, and it will work. There is an option for tell to ignore files it cannot find.

More importantly, the latest version includes an option to execute any file, and interpret stdout as .env or JSON/YAML with env vars. So you could add an extra script like:

. my-env.sh
env

which should output all the env vars including those that are set in the script. Will need to update the readme.