How to use environment variables with docker-compose from other directory

Question

I'm setting up a new docker-based server and I'm writing a script to run

$ docker-compose

for all my docker-compose.yml files at once.

I know about existence of .env files and I know about env_file option in docker-compose.yml , however the .env files are ignored when I launch

$ docker-compose up

from other directory and not even full path in env_file helps.

my_script.sh:

#!/bin/bash

docker-compose up -f /server1/docker-compose.yml -f /server2/docker-compose.yml -f /server3/docker-compose.yml

Docker-compose.yml:

version: '3'

services:
  service_name:
    build: /server1/apache
    env_file: /server1/.env
    volumes:
      - /web/${ROOT_DOMAIN}/web/:/var/www/:rw

.env

ROOT_DOMAIN=server1.domain.tld

I want to replace the ${ROOT_DOMAIN} variable in volumes for the variable defined in .env file. This works like a charm, when I run

$ docker-compose up

from the /server1/ folder. However when I run my script, which is in other directory, the enviroment variables are ignored and default to null.

How to fix this?

Answer 1

Sorry to say, but this cannot be fixed. The provided .env file must be in the same directory.

This is a requirement of docker compose and is described in the docs (first paragraph): https://docs.docker.com/compose/env-file/

Answer 2

You can roll your own:

function execute() {    
    (set -a;  source .env;  cat $1 | envsubst | kubectl apply -f -)
}

execute foo.yaml

And

$ cat .env
FOO=123
BAR=abc

$ cat foo.yaml
{
    "myfoo": $FOO,
    "mybar": $BAR
}

Answer 3

You can use the flag --env-file to set the path where the .env file is located, example:

docker-compose --env-file ./config/.env.dev up

https://docs.docker.com/compose/environment-variables/