DEV Community

Serhat Teker
Serhat Teker

Posted on • Originally published at tech.serhatteker.com on

Get Environment Variables From a File into Makefile

#make #linux #unix

It is very easy to achive that in make:

# Makefile

include .$(PWD)/.env
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

That's all. You can now access your env vars in make targets:

# Makefile

include .$(PWD)/.env

dummy-target:
    @echo $(SOME_ENV_VAR)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Sub-make

If want to you pass all your environment variables into Sub-make you should export them:

# Makefile

ENV := $(PWD)/.env

# Environment variables for project
include $(ENV)

# Export all variable to sub-make
export
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Multiple Files

You can use multiple env files and their names can be anything:

# Variables
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VENV        := $(PWD)/.venv
ENV         := $(PWD)/.env
ENVS        := $(PWD)/.envs

# Environment variables for project
include $(ENV)
# Local environment variables for db
include $(ENVS)/.postgres
include $(ENVS)/.redis

# Export all variable to sub-make
export
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

All done.

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
smac89 profile image
smac89 •

Downside to this is that .env syntax is not a subset of the Makefile syntax because there are certain symbols allowed in .env, which make requires to be escaped. For example the symbols: # and $.

Also the fact that make treats tab as special means that it will attempt to interpret tabs as meaningful inside .env files

Read next

darshitpp profile image

SSH Tunnelling with Java

Darshit Patel -

viiik profile image

How to host your own radicle node. Contribute to decentralized source control. 🌌

Eduard -

thayto profile image

Zero Downtime Deployment with Docker Compose in an OCI VPS using GitHub Actions

Rafael Thayto -

erikaheidi profile image

Running WordPress on Containers

Erika Heidi -