Process.env on Mac returns incomplete information

[Jehad Affoneh]

If I run node on my machine and run process.env I am able to see the environment variables I've defined in .profile or bash_profile but when running node-webkit, I only get the system defined variables (like HOME, USER, etc) and I do not get any of the variables I defined in .profile or .bash_profile.

[Jehad Affoneh]

Any updates on this one? Anyone running into this issue?

[para...@gmail.com]

Hi Jehad,

node-webkit only inherits environment variables from the bash profile if it is run from the shell. On OSX:

$ open -n -a node-webkit ~/nw-test/

... Works great!

If you want to pull in all environment variables from the user's bash profile when launched from a GUI, you'll have to run the default shell in a child process and parse the environment:

function get_env(callback) {

    var sh = require("child_process").spawn("sh", [

        "-c",

        "source ~/.bash_profile; env"

    ]);

    var result = "";

    sh.stdout.on("data", function (data) {

        result += data.toString();

    });

    sh.on("close", function () {

        var env = {};

        var lines = result.split("\n");

        for (var i = 0; i < lines.length; i++) {

            var kv = lines[i].split("=", 2);

            env[kv[0]] = kv[1];

        }

        callback(env);

    });

}

get_env(function (env) {

    document.write(JSON.stringify(env));

});