.env not read so ${ENV_VAR} unusable in .yarnrc.yml

[lensbart]

Describe the bug

I’m sure I must be doing something wrong, but I can’t get yarn to read the environment variables in my .env file, causing any yarn command to throw the following error when ${ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES} are used in .yarnrc.yml:

Usage Error: Environment variable not found (ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLES) in [...]/.yarnrc.yml (in [...]/.yarnrc.yml)

Could it be that I have to configure something? The docs don’t seem to mention so.

To Reproduce

Clone this example repo and run yarn: https://github.com/lensbart/yarn

• macOS 11.2.3 (20D91)
• Node v14.16.0
• Yarn version 2.4.1

Note: I didn’t use Sherlock because I thought this might interfere with resolving the .env file

[merceyz]

Yarn doesn't read .env files, it reads your environment variables from process.env.***

[lensbart]

Thanks for the (very) quick response. Could you suggest a recommended way to have the .env file made available to yarn via process.env.***? Usually I would use the dotenv package, but not sure how to do so via the CLI.

Thanks again!

[arcanis]

Why not put them in your bashrc/zshrc/...?

[lensbart]

Brilliant! Not only did this fix my problem, but I can get rid of my dotenv dependency as well. And that on a Friday evening!! 😁

[quisido]

I still think this is valid. I don't want to put it in .zshrc because it only applies to the one repository, e.g. a secret/access key for pulling dependencies from a private registry. I may want to configure this differently for each repository. Yarn should support repo-specific environment variables.

[rszemplinski]

I still think this is valid. I don't want to put it in .zshrc because it only applies to the one repository, e.g. a secret/access key for pulling dependencies from a private registry. I may want to configure this differently for each repository. Yarn should support repo-specific environment variables.

I agree with this. I would rather have repo specific environment vars instead of global

[tavoyne]

I agree. Typical use case is for NPM auth tokens that may differ from a project to an other. It'd be great if Yarn could read the .env file before performing any logic, or at least let us opt in for that behaviour (e.g. by explicitly specifying a path to the file in question). Can try to work on a PR if it's a setting that you'd consider integrating @arcanis.

[slaesh]

@theoavoyne would love to see your PR coming :)

[tavoyne]

@slaesh #3938