What is the best way to pass several environment variables to a docker agent? I have them in a

.env

file but I don't see a way to pass this file in the cli. Alternatively, how do I tell the agent to use my

config.toml

? I have one at

~/.prefect/config.toml

that is used when using

flow.run()

Can I tell the agent running on the same machine to use this config file?

Hi @Pedro Machado ! You can pass environment variables to the agent from the CLI using the

-e

or

--env

flags as detailed here in the docs.

I have 12 of them. I was wondering if there was a way to pass them via a file. What about the context approach? How can I pass context to the docker agent?

Hm I don't think they're passable via a file but perhaps context is a good way to go because you can read the variables you'd like into the context at build time

Is it possible to set the context in a config.toml for the agent to use?

So I think it's important to note the agent's purpose in Prefect, which is as an orchestrator/manager for disparate, independent workflows. As such, it usually doesn't make sense to pass flow-specific context to an agent, but instead to define them on the flow's context or environment directly. For example, you can build a flow with docker storage that contains and

env_vars

dict in which you can pass your desired environment variables from the build context

I see what you are saying. I could pass

env_vars

at build time for flow-specific configuration. What do you recommend for things like db credentials? I am currently passing them to the agent as env variables and reading them via

EnvVarSecret

. Is this the optimal way if we don't have access to a secret store? Do you have any recommended patterns to set up the code so that it runs locally with

flow.run()

and in a docker container? Unfortunately, we'll have to use the local file system for results and output and the paths are different than in the local environment. I got it to work using env variables like

PREFECT_BASE_DIR

which points to the directory where the flows to read some sql templates and

PREFECT__CONTEXT__LOCAL_RESULTS_DIR

to specify where the results will be written. Does this sound reasonable or can you think of a better approach?

Definitely @Pedro Machado -

EnvVarSecret

is the way to go in that case. You can always set environment variables during your docker's build step as well.

flow.run

will run in your local process so for that to happen you'd need to call that from within the container itself. Otherwise that sounds like a viable approach