import.meta.env does not work for dependencies when running in development

Describe the bug

I’m trying to pass some environment variables to parts of my modular application. For that I have some import.meta.env statements in my dependencies.

When I build it in production, all seems to work fine; the import.meta.env statements are statically replaced with their actual values and all is well.

This is not consistent with the behaviour I’m seeing when running this in development. Here I am getting an undefined error. It looks like, contrary to production mode, that in development only the actual project gets its import.meta.env filled in.

Is there any way to circumvent this? Is this intended behaviour?

Reproduction

• Make a project
• Add a dependency using import.meta.env
• Build for production -> no problem
• Run development server -> 💥

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 4.19 Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 10 (buster)
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz
    Memory: 1.54 GB / 15.33 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.7.1 - /usr/bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 14.15.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.4/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.0 - ~/.yarn/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.1.4 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.4/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 94.0.4606.81
    Firefox: 78.15.0esr
  npmPackages:
    vite: ^2.6.14 => 2.7.1

Used Package Manager

npm

Logs

No response

Validations

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• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.

[souljorje]

@pielambr I was thinking to use define too, but rejected this idea for some reasonable argument I successfully forgot 😄 I finished my setup, works fine, hit me in case you need help. Few more insights: Use resolve.dedupe for same dependencies with parts. I use npm link for local development, it “steals” dependencies of linked package (well known not resolved bug https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/10343). Was trying to resolve it different ways, ended up with installation of “disappearing” dependencies locally, even though they’re not imported anywhere directly.

[pielambr]

I had not solved it, was thinking of switching over to https://vitejs.dev/config/#define to solve it, but will try the approach in your last comment, thanks!