How to disable python-dotenv

Quite a lot of packages use this library. I have an .env file which I use for a different purpose and cannot be parsed by python-dotenv. I get a lot of messages like:

Python-dotenv could not parse statement starting at line 1
Python-dotenv could not parse statement starting at line 2

Is there an environmental variable that I can set that will disable python-dotenv?

I am not asking about a specific library as I've already encountered this error in flask, pipenv and nltk. Since this library deals with the environment already I think having an environmental variable to disable it is not unreasonable.

I'm not sure it will solve it, but I thought of a workaround: point to another file via the -f parameter:

$ echo "a=1" > .env
$ echo "b=2" > /tmp/dummy.env
$ dotenv list # by default grabs vars from .env
a=1
$ dotenv -f /tmp/dummy.env list # does not grab them when pointing towards other file
b=2

The problem is that I don't want dotenv, it is being loaded by a transitive dependency. I don't call the code and there is no way for me to choose the file that it loads.

The dotenv cli doesn't help with that as the -f setting does not alter how the library loads in future. One solution to this issue would be an environmental variable that points to the file to use, and if set but blank then dotenv reads nothing.

I'm having same problem currently getting warnings since I have set up my .env in another way.

Adding the following suppressions to my import statements "solved" it.

import logging
import warnings

logging.disable(logging.CRITICAL)

with warnings.catch_warnings(action="ignore"):
    from litellm import completion

I believe skipping just the autoloader for load_dotenv() with a environment variable is probably cleanest option here, unless someone else has a better idea!

DOTENV_AUTOLOAD_DISABLED=1
DOTENV_AUTOLOAD_DISABLED=true

That said, the downstream library should provide a way to skip the call to load_dotenv(), apart from just detecting if python-dotenv is installed or not.

Happy to review a PR!

feat: add `PYTHON_DOTENV_DISABLED` flag to disable load_dotenv (fixes t…

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How to disable python-dotenv #510

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duarte-pompeu commented on Jun 12, 2024

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