Activation of a directory environment

Once you have finished setting your .envrc.ini configuration file, you can now activate your directory environment. The activation process will parse the content of your .envrc.ini file and will load modules accordingly.

To activate your directory environment, you have two possibilities:

Acitvate it manually
Automate activation using direnv

Depending on the value of variable DIRENV_DEBUG_LEVEL for module direnv_management, log output might change when activating directory environment, either manually or automatically.

If DIRENV_DEBUG_LEVEL is set to DEBUG or INFO, you will have following output when activating directory environment:

[INFO] Loading module module_name.

Manual activation

Not recommend way to activate directory environment

Manual activation of directory environment is not recommend. Exported variables and scripts added to the PATH when activating the directory environment will be available even outside of the working directory. Until you manually deactivate the directory environment (see section Deactivate).

This may create conflict with other working environment. We strongly recommend the automatic activation using direnv. Indeed, with direnv, the directory environment will automatically be deactivated when leaving the working directory.

To activate the directory environment manually, you simply need to source .direnv/activate_direnv file:

# Activate manuall directory environment
source .direnv/activate_direnv

If something went wrong, you will see output like:

[ERROR] Error message to explain what happen.

In this case, please refers to section Error during activation below.

Automatic activation

If you are a direnv user, you might want to automate activation of the directory environment (which is exactly direnv purpose. In order to do so, when setting up the directory environment a file .envrc has be put in the directory. So, you might have seen the following message:

direnv: error /path/to/.envrc is blocked. Run `direnv allow` to approve its content.

So to automate the activation of the directory environment, you just need to type the following command:

direnv allow

If something went wrong, you will see output like:

[ERROR] Error message to explain what happen.

In this case, please refers to section Error during activation below.

Error during activation

During the activation of the directory environment, you might see output message starting with [ERROR] (indepently of the value of variable DIRENV_DEBUG_LEVEL).

Normally, you might see three types of error:

Module does not exists
```
[ERROR] Module module_name does not exists !
[ERROR] Please review file /path/to/.envrc.ini to remove or comment it.
```
This menas that you setup a wrong section module, i.e. [module_name] in your .envrc.ini file. Please review your .envrc.ini file, this might come from a typo error. Moreover, see available modules to know which modules is available.
SHA1 error of a specific module
```
[ERROR] SHA1 of file `.direnv/modules/module_name.sh`  does not correspond to `.direnv/.sha1/modules/module_name.sh.sha1`.
[ERROR] An error occurs while loading direnv
```
This means that the module specified has been modify. This is a security feature.

Normally, direnv provide a security when file .envrc has been modify to avoid execution of malicious code. But usage of this project make no use of this security. As you can activate directory environment manually or if you are using direnv you never need to update .envrc, so once allowed, direnv will not know it it will execute malicious code.

To tackle this issues, every files used by this project is provided with its SHA1 sum. So, when activating directory environment first things done is to ensure that these files as not been modified and so, avoid execution of malicious code.

If you modify one of these files volontarily, you will need to update the corresponding SHA1 sum of the files you modified. To do so, please refer to the tutorial Add direnv module. And, even better, if you modify a files, this probably means that project currently lack a feature. Do not hesitate to contribute and submit a merge request to let the community make profit of your enhancement. In order to do so, please refers to the Developers Guide
SHA1 error of .envrc.ini
```
[ERROR] SHA1 of file `.envrc.ini`  does not correspond to `.direnv/.sha1/.envrc.ini.sha1`.
[ERROR] If you modify /path/to/.envrc.ini.
[ERROR] Please remove /path/to/.direnv/.sha1/.envrc.ini.sha1.
[ERROR] And reactivate direnv.
```
This means your .envrc.ini has been modified, probably by you. But if it is not the case, this project avoid malicious modification of your .envrc.ini.

Indeed, as for files provided with this project, there is a protection mechanism. This project require a SHA1 sum of your .envrc.ini. This SHA1 sum is stored in .direnv/.sha1/.envrc.ini.sha1.

If this file does not exist, then the SHA1 sum of your .envrc.ini file will be computed and stored in .direnv/.sha1/.envrc.ini.sha1.

If this file exists, then each time you will activate your directory environment, the SHA1 sum of your .envrc.ini will be checked against the value stored in .direnv/.sha1/.envrc.ini.sha1.

If the value differs, then you will see this error. In this case, review the content of your .envrc.ini. If something seems wrong, then correct it in your .envrc.ini, else, if everything seems right for you, then you can simply delete .direnv/.sha/.envrc.ini.sha1 and finally, you can activate your directory environment again.

Last update: April 27, 2021