How to load env on production

[karchung0930]

Hihi, I'm using the adapter-node and following the documentation here to deploy: https://kit.svelte.dev/docs/adapter-node

I saw that the env will not be loaded automatically on production. I can run this code: node --env-file=.env build.

I use pm2 start index.js when I'm in example.com/build. But how to use pm2 for the command above for env?

Actually, after the pm2 start index.js, I tested and saw the env is already loaded without node -r dotenv/config build or node --env-file=.env build.

1. Why the .env is loaded without the env command? The documentaion is inaccurate?
2. If it's indeed needed, hwo to do it with pm2?

[brunnerh]

1. It does not load .env files at runtime.
   If you only used $env/static/*, those are built directly into the output code and thus don't need to be loaded but also cannot be changed later.
2. PM2 supports env variables in a config file.
   If you don't want to use that, there also is a --node-args option, so you can add --node-args="-r dotenv/config".