Home / server / Questions / 540328
Accepted
wodow
Asked: 2013-09-20 13:48:24 +0800 CST

Is there a utility to read environment variables from an env file and then run a command (more lightweight than foreman)?

  • 772

foreman can read .env files and set environment variables from the contents, and then run a program

e.g. foreman run -e vars.env myprogram

...but it does a lot of other things (and is primarily concerned with starting things using its Procfile format).

Is there a simpler (Linux/Unix) tool that's just focussed on reading .env files and executing a command with the new environment?

Example environment file (from http://ddollar.github.io/foreman/#ENVIRONMENT ):

FOO=bar
BAZ=qux
linux

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can source the environment file in the active shell and run the program:

    sh -ac ' . ./.env; /usr/local/bin/someprogram'

    The -a switch exports all variables, so that they are available to the program.

    • 22

  2. Another alternative is envdir:

    envdir runs another program with environment modified according to files in a specified directory.

    • 2

  3. I tried source .env and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately, none of the other solutions posted here worked for me.

    • 2

  4. This works:

    env $(cat .env | tr "\\n" " ") myprogram

    but obviously doesn't check the format of the .env file for correctness, which a utility program would do.

    • 1