How To Install direnv on Ubuntu 22.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install direnv on Ubuntu 22.04. direnv is Utility to set directory specific environment variables

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install direnv on Ubuntu 22.04.

What is direnv

direnv is:

direnv is an environment variable manager for your shell. It knows how to hook into bash, zsh and fish shell to load or unload environment variables depending on your current directory. This allows one to have project-specific environment variables and not clutter the “~/.profile” file.

Before each prompt it checks for the existence of an “.envrc” file in the current and parent directories. If the file exists, it is loaded into a bash sub-shell and all exported variables are then captured by direnv and then made available to your shell.

Because direnv is compiled into a single static executable it is fast enough to be unnoticeable on each prompt. It is also language agnostic and can be used to build solutions similar to rbenv, pyenv, phpenv, …

There are three methods to install direnv on Ubuntu 22.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install direnv Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install direnv using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install direnv

Install direnv Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install direnv using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install direnv

Install direnv Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install direnv using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install direnv

How To Uninstall direnv on Ubuntu 22.04

To uninstall only the direnv package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove direnv

Uninstall direnv And Its Dependencies

To uninstall direnv and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 22.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove direnv

Remove direnv Configurations and Data

To remove direnv configuration and data from Ubuntu 22.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge direnv

Remove direnv configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove direnv configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge direnv

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install direnv package on Ubuntu 22.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.