env var DATA_DIR not set

[qlex]

Maybe a dumb question, but eventough i created /tmp/data folder, upon ./build.sh I'm getting:
env var DATA_DIR not set error.

[dianashk]

Hi @qlex! Excellent question. There are many ways to set that DATA_DIR environment variable. If you're running the build.sh script it needs to be explicitly exported or specified along with the execution.

export DATA_DIR=/tmp/data 
./build.sh

Or

DATA_DIR=/tmp/data ./build.sh

[kannes]

https://github.com/pelias/dockerfiles#prerequisites says to

A directory for storing downloaded datasets. Set DATA_DIR to the folder's path in .env file.

which did nothing for me. Maybe qlex was misled by that just like I was.

[orangejulius]

Hey @qlex and @kannes,

Thanks for pointing this out. It looks like the code is a bit torn between two approaches: using a shell environment variable, as @dianashk suggested above, and using the .env file which is used only by docker-compose.

One option we could take to fix this would be to remove the line that checks for that environment variable in build.sh. However, then it would be required that we build checking for that environment variable into each of our Docker images (I think), which would be rather repetitive.

The other option is to use only shell environment variables, and drop usage of the .env file completely. Then all our scripts can directly enforce needed variables. The downside here is docker-compose up by itself would probably not work.

[orangejulius]

Hi all. We've discovered in #48 that we can make our shell scripts and docker-compose use the .env file fairly easily. So now there's no need to run export DATA_DIR=... any more, and only one place to keep up to date!