I need to use a variable between node modules folder and src folder.Is there a way to use a variable to be used within the whole project?
Thanks.
Typically this is done with process environment variables. Any project can look for a common environment variable and handle that case accordingly, as well as the node modules of said project. As long as they agree on the name, they all share the same environment. Have a good default, don't force people to set this environment variable.
The environment can be set using an environment file (do not check this into source control!), on your container or cloud configuration, or even right on the command line itself.
TLOG=info npm test
That is an example that I use frequently. My project runs logging for the test cases only at alert level - there are a lot of tests so it makes the output less verbose. However, sometimes while developing I want to see all the logs, so my project is looking for an environment variable TLOG (short for "test logging") and I can set it just for that run! Also no code change is needed, which is nicer than JavaScript variables that need to be set back to original values, forget to be turned off, etc.
Related
I am creating a build system for development purposes for the FreeCAD application. Repo is here if you want to get a better scope of what I'm talking about.
Essentially the folder structure is:
(Main)
(Linux)
(Ubuntu)
ubuntu.sh
ubuntu.Dockerfile
(Fedora)
fedora.sh
fedora.Dockerfile
(Windows)
(Mac)
.env
What I want to do is use the env variables in .env as a central source of truth for all the build scripts in the tree. But I don't want to have to explicitly define the path of the .env inside the files, absolute or relative paths, as I'm still iterating and I don't want to update all the files if I rearrange the tree. Alternatively, I don't want to put independent .env's in all the child dirs for the same reason (unless they auto update somehow)
My question is as follows:
How do I just explicitly define the "local" path of .env in each script, Dockerfile, etc but only have to modify one top level .env file to auto-update an evolving tree. In a cross platform way
Some things I thought through:
Windows uses "hard links" which are equivalent but non compatible with POSIX hardlinks. I thought about creating windows.env and posix.env in each child dir that point to the same main .env. But most config files can only take one .env path argument.
I thought about writing a script that will update all the .env's when run (would rather not have to), or alternatively, I will accept an answer that uses some dotenv tooling to accomplish the same goal as long as it's cross-platform, and runs locally. I'm just not super familiar with those toolings. I would prefer the tooling or script run as a service and not have to be run everytime in order to update the files.
IF I'm using Git AND only referring to shell scripts, then a command at the top of the script such as . /$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.env works well but has major limitations for use with dockerfiles and other yml based file types.
I currently use a run.sh file at the top level dir that sources the .env and then calls the other files within it. This seems to be the most used pattern I see in other repos. But this means I need to have two files run.sh and run.pwsh which just seems extranuous and hacky to add extras files that are basically one liners.
I am trying to test my config files by validating them, nothing fancy, a schema, a list of envs, iterate over it, load the config and validate the variable against the schema.
Problem is, to do that, I currently have to set process.env.NODE_ENV. Since the tests have their own reserved config file, this mean if the tests were run in parrallel, it may happen that the test change the NODE_ENV variable when the other tests are loading the config, which while it doesn't seems likely to happens, still bother me.
A simple solution would be to be able to tell node-config to ignore the environment variable, and use a given value as if it was, something like require('config')('myNodeEnv'), but I couldn't find anything similar in the wiki nor the documentation. The closest is custom env variable, but this would just move the problem to another variable.
Instead of tests having their own config files, tests should load a same "base" test-config.
When a specific test needs to override a specific value it should override that specific value and not the entire config (needless to say, we need to make sure to fix the overridden value when the test finishes).
When we work as described above, it reduces the chances of any collision because the chances that different tests will override the exact same value at the exact same moment is very low.
Another option is to run tests separately, for example:
npm run test:suite1
npm run test:suite2
where test:suite1 could be declared in package.json under scripts section, for example:
"test:suite1": "NODE_ENV=test-conf-1 tests/suite1.js",
...
I'm currently learning and toying with Node.js and Express.js and I was wondering what is the proper or most accurate way to use/access a variable depending on environment ( production|development|test ) in client/index.html ?
Typically I would like to use a different Google Analytics code in production and in development environment.
Currently I'm going to investigate/test two solutions :
using grunt to inject relevant code in client/index.html
using a variable set in /server/config/environment/[production|development|test].js
Is there another options and which one is most appropriate way to do this ?
Both are equal, but the second is a bit easier to maintain. You can also pass this value as a URL param in DEV mode (e.g. ?code=123) and skip in production for using a hardcoded constant.
Sample situation
I have my own Yeoman generator, which has a folder with "template" of the resulting project.
The generator takes some information from user, interpolates the "template" with the information and then outputs a simple working project.
I want to ensure the "template" is actually working, at least in one positive scenario if not with all combination of inputs. I can write integration tests (which will run the generator with some data and then try to run the resulting code and verify whether all works as expected), but still, that's sometimes too much work and it's inconvenient for trial and error kind of development or some prototyping.
Question
Is there an easy way how to work with the "template" itself, how to run it or use it locally, manually, without the need to run the generator first every time I change a single letter in files of the "template"?
Maybe some sort of build step, which would run the generator for me with some preset data? Is there anything ready in form of npm module? Does a best practice exist?
After running the integration test, you can spawn some commands in the generated project folder and see if those are passing fine.
So far, the best solution I found is to create a script, which:
Creates a temporary sandbox directory.
Performs npm link
Alters the PATH so it does not contain .bin of your local node_modules (this is needed to prevent locally installed Yeoman take precedence over the global one when the script is ran e.g. as npm run develop).
Sets an environment value NON_INTERACTIVE to something truthy.
Runs yo <your generator> in the sandbox directory.
Runs npm start in the sandbox directory to run the freshly generated server code.
Change your generator so it is able to automatically provide some dummy default values for required prompts without default values if process.env.NON_INTERACTIVE is truthy.
Then run the script as:
$ nodemon --watch <directory with your template> --exec <path to your script> --ext js
It's slow, but it works. This way you can develop the template itself and avoid filling the generator every time you need to try out something.
What is the typical use-case for adding --prefix support to a scons build?
Currently I use Variables to persist user options from the command-line, but that requires I use the name PREFIX to be recognized as a variable. The docs show a way to specify the preifx using AddOption but then this option must be specified everytime scons is run: it isn't persisted like the variables.
What is the typical way to handle this?
You will need to use Add/GetOption to create an option the user can provide on the command line.
After, yous users will need to set the environment variable SCONSFLAGS with options they want to provide to SCons everytime. SCons will read this variable everytime.
http://www.scons.org/doc/2.0.1/HTML/scons-user/c2076.html
It's not a good idea to have many environment variable on the user machine because you lost the documentation and which variable you really need to compile.