Variables from multiple .env files

Hey!

Thanks for the awesome lib!

It would be nice if env-cmd could read variables from multiple .env files. There is a common approach to use .env and .env.local, and maybe .env.<environment> (.env.production, .env.development, etc.) schema.

Here are the examples:

• https://symfony.com/doc/current/configuration.html#overriding-environment-values-via-env-local (Symfony)
• https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/environment-variables#default-environment-variables (Next.js)
• https://create-react-app.dev/docs/adding-custom-environment-variables/#what-other-env-files-can-be-used (Create React App)

It’s a common and nice practice since you can use common defaults in an .env file and then override them in a machine-specific .env.local. Usually you commit .env to a git repository and do not commit .env.local (secrets go there).

Currently it looks like it’s impossible to use env-cmd in such way. It would be nice if we could by using some argument, for example:

env-cmd --cascade mocha -R spec
# or different argument name of course

[soophie]

We fixed it in a way by using: env-cmd -f .env.staging env-cmd -f .env.staging.local --silent run-scripts build Because of silent it doesn’t matter if you have a local file, but it will be read.

[toddbluhm]

I had been thinking about this idea for a while. Probably the next major rewrite will take this approach. Not sure when that will be, but I have been needing to turn my attention back to this project for a while now. Thanks for the feature request 😄