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FAQ & Known issues

FAQ

Troubleshoot

Direnv tell me that .envrc file is blocked (click to reveal)

When downloading repo with a file .envrc or when creating a file .envrc in a folder, direnv may print the following line:

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

This is normal as direnv come with a protection mecanism to not run .envrc files which are not explicitly allowed. Indeed, for instance, if a malicious person write the command rm -rf ${HOME} in the .envrc and if this file would have been automatically run, this will lead to disastrous events (in this example, you will lose every files and folder in your HOME)

In this case, check the content of the file provided in the error. If you agree with it content you can allow it for direnv with the following command direnv allow.

If you modify the file .envrc once already allowed, this file will automatically be denied by direnv as its hash differs from the previous version. So after a modification on an already allowed .envrc you will need to allow this new version.

Direnv taking a long time to initialize (click to reveal)

Sometimes, if your script activate_direnv do a lots of things (or especially when activating the directory environment for the first time), you might see the following line:

direnv: ([/usr/bin/direnv export bash]) is taking a while to execute. Use CTRL-C to give up.

There are two possibilities:

  • Either your script activate_direnv is long to be processed. In this case, there is nothing much you can do except optimizing your script.

  • Either there is a bug in your script activate_direnv. The best thing to do is to temporarly deactivate direnv automatic behaviour. This can easily be done by moving your file .envrc at the root of the repo. Then execute manually the script activate_direnv to find its bugs.

Direnv tell me it can not export PS1

In the provided activate_direnv script, we automatically load the python directory environment. Normally, doing this should update variable PS1 which is used to display information in before each command (see Prompt Customization).

Default for bash is usually of the form $(username)@$(hostname), as shown below:

username@hostname:~ >

Well, direnv is unable to update the PS1 variable and will print the following error:

direnv: PS1 cannot be exported. For more information see https://github.com/direnv/direnv/wiki/PS1

Do not worry, this will not make direnv not working, it just means that when your python virtual environment will be loaded, this virtual environment will not be shown as usual, like shown below:

(python_venv)username@hostname:~ >

For more information, see: https://github.com/direnv/direnv/wiki/PS1

Last update: August 28, 2020