We have extra config for our app to run inside app.config.ts and some environment variable validation in order to populate it. expo install, as I understand, reads some of the core expo config in order to make some decisions on library versions. It does not need the full configuration with the extra params. We have no way of detecting expo install vs normal build at runtime (i.e. it does not set any specific environment vars, or anything).
For our application, rather than using dotenv at runtime we simply require certain environment variables to exist.
Our local development scripts to start the server use dotenv-cli to populate some environment variables. Our CI builds rely on the environment variables set in CI. For this reason we always validate the required environment variables and don’t pre-populate anything.
We would either like to have a pre-script hook so we can make the same dotenv call before expo install happens, or a way to detect inside app.config.ts that expo install is running (some env) so we don’t need to expose full config.
Does anyone know how this could be achieved?
FYI this exact question was raised via the expo forums over a week ago, but there does not seem to be enough attention/activity there: https://forums.expo.dev/t/expo-install-does-full-config-load-including-extra-any-way-to-pre-hook-and-set-env-vars-or-detect-expo-install-at-runtime/62123