Reload .env after updates fail

[vbakke]

Steps to reproduce:

• Open Rstudio with a project using dotenv
• Run the R script that uses library(dotenv)
• Change a variable in the .env file
• Rerun the script

The Sys.getenv("TEST_VAR") still reports the old value of TEST_VAR.

[vbakke]

A workaround I've found is to manually run detach("package:dotenv", unload=TRUE) every time I update my .env file.

[timoruohomaki]

A workaround I've found is to manually run detach("package:dotenv", unload=TRUE) every time I update my .env file.

Thanks, that solved it for me as well. Fortunately there are not that many updates but still.

[gaborcsardi]

Maybe dotenv could unload itself, so the repeated library() call would load it again, so it could load the updated env vars.

[gaborcsardi]

Maybe dotenv could unload itself, so the repeated library() call would load it again, so it could load the updated env vars.

This is actually pretty difficult, so I won't do it.

However, a good workaround is to use

dotenv::load_dot_env()

in your script. Or, if you want to condition it on the existence of .env, then:

if (file.exists(".env")) dotenv::load_dot_env()

With this, the script will re-load .env every time it runs.

[vbakke]

Yes, running dotenv::load_dot_env() explicitley is waht I ended up doing as well.

If unloading is difficult, /which I presume is it, I recommend changing the 'Usage' in the README to:

library(dotenv)
dotenv::load_dot_env()

Then I think this issue is solved. :)