Support load .env into the current shell

[liudonghua123]

I want to load .env into the current shell environment, does it support this feature?

[dkundel]

It sort of is. It's technically not the current shell environment but you could spawn a new shell using the tool. For example

npx node-env-run -e bash

This will open bash inside your current shell with the new environment variables applied. Similarly you could replace bash with whatever shell you want to run or even run:

npx node-env-run -e $SHELL

This would run a new shell with whatever you are already as your current shell.

Note This will spawn a new shell inside your shell. So it will look like you just successfully executed a command but in reality you are inside a shell inside your shell. Meaning once you are done with your work you should consider running exit to get out of the nested shell.

[dkundel]

Also if you just want to load in the .env file itself you can consider using source .env instead. This should just load them in.

[liudonghua123]

You are right, I find it it difficult to change environment variables of parent process from the child process. The quick method for this maybe create a sub shell process.

Also source .env only works in Unix/Linux, does not work in Windows cmd or powershell.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/372627/is-it-possible-to-pass-environment-variables-from-child-to-parent-in-user-space