[V5] ENV_PATH not working

[GabrielGomesBarbosa]

Hi folks, i don't know whats happens but simply ENV_PATH stop working, im my project i have .env and .env.local files, and i use .env.local by the comand ENV_PATH=.env.local node ace serve --watch and its was working normaly, so i installed cross-env as developement dependency and my script on package.json was something like that:

  "scripts": {
    ...
    "dev": "cross-env ENV_PATH=.env.local node ace serve --watch",
    ....
  },

this works until today... but now a strange thing is happening, i will show

My env files:

My Package.json:

.env file content:

.env.local file content:

Basically the only difference is the port, node environment and database variables, but on .env the port is 3334 and .env.local the port is 3333, when i run the comand ENV_PATH=.env.local node ace serve --watch, is expected that the application use .env.local and run on port 3333, but its not happens, look at the result:

Adonis get data from .env instead .env.local file, when i delete .env file, so the adonis get from .env.local, but if i delete .env.local instead .env i got error, that is the adonis load .env.local but get data from .env

PS: I just follow this documentation link https://docs.adonisjs.com/guides/environment-variables#do-not-commit-the-env-file

OS: Windows 10
AodnisJS: 5.3.4
Node: 14.18.1

[Julien-R44]

Are you sure that port 3333 is not already in use on your machine? Replace port 3333 by 3337 for example in your .env.local file and see if this port get assigned. If it is, it means that port 3333 is already used by a process on your machine

[GabrielGomesBarbosa]

Hi @Julien-R44 , thanks for your answer, i already tried it, but does not make sense, if i delete .env and execute ENV_PATH=.env.local node ace serve --watch it's run on port 3333 normally.

I did your test, i put port 3337, 3338 on my .env.local but it still get from .env when i execute ENV_PATH=.env.local node ace serve --watch command.

PS: I start a new project to test it, happen the same thing.
PS2: I test it on another machine and the same thing.

[Julien-R44]

I noticed the same behavior here, so I went and searched the code. In fact, the dev server will look for the three variables HOST, PORT, and TZ in the .env file, no matter the value of ENV_PATH :
https://github.com/adonisjs/assembler/blob/cb877cf6ea975912b471ee4f39385aeb9493ccae/src/DevServer/index.ts#L98

So a quick way to fix this is to run the application like this:
ENV_PATH=./env.local PORT=3333 node ace serve --watch

@thetutlage Maybe we could use ENV_PATH here instead of hardcoded ".env" path ? There might be a reason why this ".env" has been hardcoded, but I don't really see why at the moment
https://github.com/adonisjs/assembler/blob/cb877cf6ea975912b471ee4f39385aeb9493ccae/src/EnvParser/index.ts#L27

Or another solution could be to make the .env parsed by the application overwrite the rest?
https://github.com/adonisjs/application/blob/develop/src/Application.ts#L381