Which takes precedence, the local .env or the actual environment variables?

[coolaj86]

Just curious, for edge cases.

[joho]

A good question, let me try and figure out

1. What we do
2. What we should do (ie what does the ruby lib do)

[joho]

 ~/Projects/dotenvtest  ruby test.rb 
xTvDqw
foo$bar
123value
 ~/Projects/dotenvtest  BAR=other ruby test.rb 
xTvDqw
foo$bar
123other
 ~/Projects/dotenvtest  vim test.go 
 ~/Projects/dotenvtest  go run test.go
xTvDqw7
foo\
123value
 ~/Projects/dotenvtest  BAR=other go run test.go
xTvDqw7
foo\
123value

Environment variables should take preference (but don't), though there will probably be some edge cases in load vs overload.

Guess there's a 1.3.1 coming soon 😄

[coolaj86]

Had this discussion with a coworker and he told me the same.

Each time a .env is loaded the prior takes precedence.

The rationale being

• secrets go in memory only
• .env.{dev,testing,staging,prod) have the endpoints go same tier services
• .env (local) has personal preference for local dev and doesn’t get committed

[coolaj86]

Thanks for looking into that and I look forward to the new version

[coolaj86]

poke => v1.3.1 with precedence fixes?

[joho]

Hey sorry - hell of a hectic week as a sole startup founder and haven't been able to jump straight on this. Will try today or tomorrow. PRs always welcome if you need to hurry it along more than that.

[coolaj86]

I starting digging into the code and it looked as if everything was in order.

I ran a test to be sure and it seems to me that all is working as it should:

test.go:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/joho/godotenv"
)

func main() {
	os.Setenv("QUX", "nowyouseeme")
	godotenv.Load()
	godotenv.Load("second.env", "third.env")

	fmt.Printf("FOO=%s (%s)\n", os.Getenv("FOO"), "\"nowyouseeme\"")
	fmt.Printf("BAR=%s (%s)\n", os.Getenv("BAR"), "\"nowyouseeme\"")
	fmt.Printf("BAZ=%s (%s)\n", os.Getenv("BAZ"), "\"nowyouseeme\"")
	fmt.Printf("QUX=%s (%s)\n", os.Getenv("QUX"), "\"nowyouseeme\"")
	fmt.Printf("QUUX=%s (%s)\n", os.Getenv("QUUX"), "\"\"")
}

.env:

FOO=nowyouseeme
QUX=NOWYOUDONT

second.env:

FOO=NOWYOUDONT
BAR=nowyouseeme

third.env:

FOO=NOWYOUDONT2
BAR=NOWYOUDONT
BAZ=nowyouseeme

go run test.go:

# actual test results vs hard-coded expectation
FOO=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
BAR=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
BAZ=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
QUX=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
QUUX= ("")

FOO=DOUBLECHECKING go run test.go:

# result for FOO is preferring the existing environment, as expected
FOO=DOUBLECHECKING ("nowyouseeme")
BAR=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
BAZ=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
QUX=nowyouseeme ("nowyouseeme")
QUUX= ("")

[coolaj86]

Here are some suggestions for updating the REAME: #60