Is there a way to use .envrc within crontab job script on ubuntu 18

Question

We have a set of environment variables being exported from an .envrc file within a dir. In the shell you can run direnv allow and the .envrc file gets invoked, thus creating the env vars.

We would like to have this same functionality when running a script with a crontab job, but the envrc file never runs.

We have tried:

• In crontab: * * * * . $HOME/.profile; some/script/to/run
• In script: direnv allow
  • OR
• In script: eval "$(direnv export bash)"

None of that works, is there a way to run the .envrc file from a script invoked by a cron job?

Answer 1

You can use direnv exec to achieve this. It has the the arguments [DIR] COMMAND [...ARGS]. If the .envrc file is in the same folder as the script, you can change the following:

* * * * * sh /path/to/script/script.sh

To this:

* * * * * direnv exec sh /path/to/script/script.sh

If the .envrc file is in a different directory than the script, then you'll have to pass the path to the directory just after the exec argument like so:

* * * * * direnv exec /path/to/secrets sh /path/to/script/script.sh

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