Environment variables not available at runtime

[doowb]

I'm trying to access environment variables through process.env, but they are not available at runtime, unless they are there when building.

I first ran into this on fly.io. My secrets are not available when my app starts up.
I also discovered this is happening when I build the docker image locally and try to run with docker run --env-file .env.
From the shell, I can run env and see my environment variables. I can also run node and console.log(process.env) from the repl to see them. But if I do console.log(process.env); inside a server file, only the npm and node default environment variables are present.

How am I supposed to access secret environment variables at runtime?

[doowb]

I found in my vite.config.ts that I had added define: { 'process.env': process.env } at some point. That seems to be what was setting process.env at build time.

I think I ran into an error building at one point, which is why I defined it there. But it seems to build fine now.