🌳 Environment Variables

You can manage the behavior of Meerschaum and emulate multiple installations with environment variables.

The command mrsm show environment will print out your current set MRSM_ variables. For example, running this command in the Web Console reveals how the configuration is managed to subprocesses by the web server.

MRSM_ROOT_DIR

By default, your root Meerschaum directory is located in ~/.config/meerschaum (Windows: %APPDATA%\Meerschaum). This is similar to how your base pip environment behaves: with pip, you isolate packages in virtual environments, and with Meerschaum, you can create an isolated environment by specifying an alternative root directory. This will recreate your configuration files and virtual environments as if you were running a clean installation.

mkdir foo
MRSM_ROOT_DIR=foo \
  mrsm show environment

MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR

Like MRSM_ROOT_DIR, MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR lets you isolate your plugins, e.g. if you wanted to manage your plugins in a version control system like git.

mkdir plugins
touch plugins/example.py

MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR=plugins \
  mrsm show plugins

Multiple Plugins Directories

To allow you to group plugins together, Meerschaum supports loading multiple plugins directories at once. Simply separate the paths with a colon like you would for $PATH:

export MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR='./plugins:/another/plugins/path'

You could also set MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR to a JSON-encoded list of paths:

export MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR='[
    "./plugins",
    "/another/plugins/path"
]'

MRSM_<TYPE>_<LABEL>

You can temporarily register new connectors in a variable in the form MRSM_<TYPE>_<LABEL>, where <TYPE> is the connector type, and <LABEL> is the label for the connector (converted to lower case). Check here for more information about environment connectors, but in a nutshell, set the variable to the URI of your connector.

MRSM_SQL_FOO=sqlite:////tmp/temp.db \
MRSM_API_BAR=http://user:pass@localhost:8000 \
  mrsm show connectors

MRSM_CONFIG

You may patch your existing configuration with MRSM_CONFIG. Simply set the variable to JSON or a simplified dictionary. Remember you may symlink to other keys in your configuration (see below).

MRSM_CONFIG='{"foo": {"bar": 123}}' \
  mrsm show config foo

MRSM_CONFIG='foo:123' \
  mrsm show config foo

MRSM_CONFIG='foo:MRSM{meerschaum:connectors:sql:main:password}' \
  mrsm show config foo

MRSM_PATCH

The variable MRSM_PATCH behaves the same way as MRSM_CONFIG. The difference is that MRSM_PATCH is applied to your configuration after MRSM_CONFIG, so you may symlink to keys defined in MRSM_CONFIG.

MRSM_CONFIG='{"foo": "bar": 123}' \
MRSM_PATCH='baz:MRSM{foo:bar}' \
  mrsm show config baz

MRSM_CONFIG_DIR

Not to be confused with MRSM_CONFIG, setting MRSM_CONFIG_DIR allows you can designate a separate directory outside of the root to isolate your secrets and segment your configuration. If unset, the default directory is $MRSM_ROOT_DIR/config.

MRSM_VENVS_DIR

Like MRSM_PLUGINS_DIR, you can designate a separate directory outside of the Meerschaum root to contain virtual environments. This is useful for sharing virtual environments between deployments as well as separating package data from user data (e.g. Kubernetes deployments).

MRSM_VENVS_DIR='venvs/' mrsm show plugins