Environment Variables¶

Our docker-compose script uses two environment variables; DB_USER and DB_PASS.

Managing environment variables is beyond the scope of this document, but…

Viewing environment variables¶

You can see your current environment variables:

$ env

TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app
DB_PASS=crc_pass
TERM=xterm-256color
SHELL=/bin/bash
CLICOLOR=true
...

You can set environment variables for the current session.

$ export DB_USER=crc_user
$ export DB_PASS=crc_pass

When you export environment variables like this, they are available system wide, but only for your current shell session.

You can see them in your environment variables:

$ env |grep DB_
DB_PASS=crc_pass
DB_USER=crc_user

Another option–and the one we use, is to set these environment variables in a .env file.

echo -e "DB_USER=crc_user\nDB_PASS=crc_pass" > .env

This creates a file with the two environment variables.

$ cat .env
DB_USER=crc_user
DB_PASS=crc_pass

When you create a .env file in a directory, the environment variables are limited to that directory.

Notice that they are not in your global environment.

$ env |grep DB_