[Feature] Reflect changes in .env*-files w/o restart

[Philzen]

When doing any changes to the .env file, rebuild + reload is not being triggered. When developing more complex generic features that are to be configured via .env*-files, it would be really handy and save a lot of time and effort to be able to have changes reflected w/o having to restart the dev server.

Should be an easy fix, because it is definitely part of the live rebuild + reload, b/c as soon as i change any other file (e.g. any line in any component's code), changes in the .env file become active.

[dac09]

Hi @Philzen thanks for raising this!

I think… but am not 100% sure, when you change dotenv files webpack doesn’t pick up the changes until you restart.

While we could certainly do it for the API side easily, it would be a confusing experience if the web and api behave differently. We would need to maintain consistency between both sides, and an unsure of the effort in doing it for the web side.

[joconor]

There’s a basic problem with the use of dotenv/dotenv-defaults by RedwoodJS: They will not overwrite already set environment variables. I’ve filed two separate issues that have this as their root cause, and I expect this will complicate efforts to get any ‘watch’ of .env, .env.defaults correct
See #5785 and #5657
More recent versions of dotenv do have an option to overwrited, but dotenv-defaults uses an older version without that option

[Philzen]

I think… but am not 100% sure, when you change dotenv files webpack doesn’t pick up the changes until you restart.

@dac09 yeah you're right, i must have been mistaken when i opened up the issue, which is now updated accordingly. I guess, until this becomes possible i will have to hard-code and wrap my configs during development.

I’ve filed two separate issues that have this as their root cause

So dunno what the Redwood PMs say. Normally i'd say, close duplicate tickets (which would be this one as it came later), but as this description states it also is a feature / enhancement to the dev experience, so it may be nice to keep and kill three birds with this root cause stone as soon as this is implemented.

[jtoar]

Confirming that changes to .env don't get hot reloaded for either the web or api side. @Philzen it's ok to leave this one open as it's a feature request.