How to handle external .env files with chezmoi

[mattiasbonte]

Good evening 👋🏼 ,

I've been migrating to chezmoi these last couple of days, it's challenging but also very cool to figure everything out!
Now there is a thing i'm struggling a bit with. I have an external repository which is managed by chezmoi's .chezmoiexternal.toml.

This is how it's defined in .chezmoiexternal.toml:

["DEV/GO/somerepo"]
    type = "git-repo"
    url = "git@github.com:dude/soomerepo.git"
    refreshPeriod = "33h"
    ["DEV/GO/somerepo".pull]
        args = ["--ff-only"]

Now this repository has a .env file which should be created when the repository is pulled, or updated when the file was changed inside chezmoi source. I would like to be able to use chezmoi to do this for me.

For example with a private_DEV/GO/somerepo/dot_env.tmpl

API_KEY={{ (bitwarden...) }}

But whenever I try to chezmoi apply im getting an error:

chezmoi: DEV/GO/somerepo: inconsistent state (/user/.local/share/chezmoi/private_DEV/GO/somerepo, git@github.com:user/somerepo.git defined in /user/.local/share/chezmoi/.chezmoiexternal.toml)

The question I have is, how to properly do this with chezmoi.. And is this a common pattern which is supported by chezmoi? Or am I butchering this and should tackle it in a different manner?

Thanks a lot for your time 🙏🏼 .

[halostatue]

Note: I do not currently use any sort of external, but similar questions have been asked.

Essentially, Chezmoi expects an entry to either be managed as an external entry or a fully managed entry, not both. So DEV/GO/somerepo is managed as an external, but you have an entry file inside of it.

The way to work around this—assuming that .env is in the repo .gitignore—would be to have an after_ script that creates DEV/GO/somerepo/.env.

[mattiasbonte]

Yes that makes sense, I guess i was curious if there was a better way of doing this natively. Thanks for your suggestion.

[cathaysia]

ref: #3065 (comment)