Dotenv: Failing on Windows 7

[Vandivier]

I'm on a Windows 7 machine. I've tried running the following scenario via cmd and also Git bash, getting the same result in both cases - undefined env variable after loading.

process.env.ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE_FULL_PATH has the expected value (like C:\Users\me\workspace\myproject\env\env.localhost-windows), but process.env.DB_HOST is unexpectedly undefined.

package.json

...
"server-windows": "set DOTENV_FILE=env.localhost-windows && node server",
...
"dotenv": "^6.2.0",

server.js

process.env.ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE_FULL_PATH = path.resolve('./env/', process.env.DOTENV_FILE);
require('dotenv').config({ path: process.env.ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE_FULL_PATH });

console.log(
  'ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE_FULL_PATH in server.js immedately after require dotenv: ',
  process.env.ENVIRONMENTAL_VARIABLE_FULL_PATH
);
console.log('DB_HOST in server.js immedately after require dotenv: ', process.env.DB_HOST);

/env/env.localhost-windows

_DB_PASSWORD=set in AWS ECS task definition container settings
_DOTENV_FILE=set in AWS ECS task definition container settings
DB_USERNAME=docker
DB_HOST=db
DB_DATABASE=docker
ECS_LOGLEVEL=debug
NODE_ENV=development

command run:

npm run server-windows

[Vandivier]

Closing as the issue is found within the package.json command:

"server-windows": "set DOTENV_FILE=env.localhost-windows && node server"

CLI is interpreting the space character after the word windows and throwing file not found because there is a space at the end.

I debugged this issue using fs.readFileSync, which threw an informative error. As an enhancement, dotenv could similarly throw:

ENOENT: no such file or directory, open 'C:\Users\jvandivier\workspace\pamplemousse\env\env.localhost-windows '

[DanielRuf]

This issue is still relevant.
It seems dotenv does not work on Windows out of the box.

This should be documented with workarounds / solutions like directly parsing the file.

Can you reopen the issue? In my opinion we should have a crossplatform solution (no extra scrip just for Windows).

[Vandivier]

Reopened per request but I have little interest in providing additional information to field the issue and I haven't tested with recent dotenv versions.

What I can say is that I still think it would be a good idea to through a more informative error in the situation originally described.