Restrictions for keys in device/device service/environment variables

Product support
1

I want to use an application that uses environment variables in a similar form like this:

foo:bar:key=somevalue

I cannot set these as balena only allows letters, digits and underscores.

Is there a specific reason why the format is restricted like that?

I can run it locally in Docker Desktop by using docker-compose and an environment file - but as balena doesn’t support env files I’m stuck.

6

Hello @mannalex,

This is due to a limitation on the supervisor with handling special characters. I’ve added your request to the issue where we’re tracking support for special characters.
You can follow that issue but we’re also going to update this thread when the issue gets resolved.

Cheers,
Nico.