*export* all variables from key=value file to shell

Question

If I want to inherit environment variables to child processes, i do something like:

export MYVAR=tork

Assume I have a a file site.conf

Answer 1

Run set -a before sourcing the file. This marks all new and modified variables that follow for export automatically.

set -a
source site.conf
set +a  # Require export again, if desired.

---

The problem you observed is that the pipe executes the export in a subshell. You can avoid that simply by using input redirection instead of a pipe.

while read assignment; do
  export "$assignment"
done < site.conf

This won't work, however, if (unlikely though it is) you have multiple assignments on one line, such as

EMAIL="dev@example.com" FULLNAME="Master Yedi"