Nx: [Feature request] Next.js: load environment variables from a `.env` file in the project folder

[elliottsj]

Expected Behavior

I've created a Next.js project with nx g @nrwl/next:app myapp.

When running nx serve myapp, I want to be able to load environment variables from a .env file in my application project folder. e.g. myworkspace/apps/myapp/.env.

As an additional feature, I'd like to be able to pass the name of the environment file as a builder option. This will allow a developer to specify different environment variables for each configuration.

e.g.

• nx serve myapp --configuration=development could load myworkspace/apps/myapp/development.env.
• nx serve myapp --configuration=production could load myworkspace/apps/myapp/production.env.

Current Behavior

Upon running nx serve myapp, environment variables are loaded only from the root of the workspace: myworkspace/.env.

Context

@nrwl/[email protected]
@nrwl/[email protected]

Environment variables typically differ for each application in a monorepo, so it makes more sense to define them per-project rather than a global .env for the workspace.

[weblancaster]

@elliottsj there is a feature/issue request for that https://github.com/nrwl/nx/issues/1848 and a PR https://github.com/nrwl/nx/issues/1848 but still waiting on the maintainers to reply on the PR.

[elliottsj]

@weblancaster Thanks, though I believe that this is slightly different than the proposed build-time environment variables.

I am proposing that we change the existing dotenv code which loads environment variables from a .env file, so that it's more customizable, allowing us to specify a specific file to load env vars from.