🐛 Bug Report: Shell Integration restores outdated ENV vars via `VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE` even after `.env` is updated or removed

[spydmobile]

🐛 Bug Report: Shell Integration restores outdated ENV vars via VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE even after .env is updated or removed

Issue Summary

VS Code's shell integration appears to persist environment variables across terminal sessions using VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE, even if those variables were originally set via a .env file that has since been deleted or modified.

This leads to terminal environment pollution, where outdated or incorrect environment variables appear in the integrated terminal without any current code, config, or .env file referencing them.

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a VS Code workspace with a .env file containing:

   DATABASE_MONGO_HOST=my-mongo-host.com
   

2. Open a terminal → this gets injected via VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE
3. Modify .env to:

   DATABASE_MONGO_HOST=localhost
   

   or delete the .env file
4. Restart VS Code and open a new terminal
5. The old value (my-mongo-host.com) is still present in the terminal environment

---

Expected Behavior

• Old VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE variables should not persist forever
• There should be a way to clear or view per-workspace shell environment cache
• Updated .env files should replace previously exported values, not conflict with them

---

Actual Behavior

• Terminal session contains outdated values from previous sessions
• These variables are not visible or configurable through any UI
• This persists even across .env changes or project reloads

---

Workaround

• Manually delete the affected workspace’s workspaceStorage folder

~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/<workspace-id>/

• This clears state.vscdb where VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE is tracked

---

VS Code Version

• Version: 1.99.0 (Stable)
• OS: macOS
• Shell: Bash via /bin/bash --init-file .../shellIntegration-bash.sh

---

Suggested Fix

• Provide a command like: Terminal: Clear Workspace Environment Variables
• List VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE values in the “Configure Environment Variable Collections” panel
• Auto-clear outdated vars when .env is modified or deleted

---

Related Code

The script at:

/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/workbench/contrib/terminal/common/scripts/shellIntegration-bash.sh

Contains the logic re-injecting old variables via VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE.

---

Thanks for your help — this would really improve DX for devs using .env files!

[peterwake]

Please fix this.. this was driving me crazy trying to work out what was going on!

[spydmobile]

Please fix this.. this was driving me crazy trying to work out what was going on!

No kidding, i could not for the life of me figure out why my database connections were failing to authenticate. I had to use 2 different External AIs to help me figure what exactly was causing it.

[spydmobile]

also a temporary workaround I found and use that seems to work most of the time is:

dotenv.config({override: true});

[anthonykim1]

Are folks able to repro this on older version of VS Code? My guess is this would have to do something with how often and how we are loading env var from .env files.

• in relation to envVarCollection

[jelling]

Unbelievably, the issue seems to be caused by the official VSCode Python extension:

By default, the Python extension looks for and loads a file named .env in the current workspace folder, then applies those definitions. The file is identified by the default entry "python.envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env" in your user settings

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/environments#_environment-variable-definitions-file

The fix is either to a) disable the Python extension for the workspace, or altogether, or b) to set python.envFile to an empty string.

VSCode team, you need to talk to your colleagues about how absolutely irresponsible it is for a language plug-in to decide to automatically load non-language specific configuration files. And it especially should not be the default.

[7PH]

So many hours wasted debugging to finally find out about this issue 😢

Here is the link to the downstream issue on vscode-python. I did not verify yet that this is actually the root cause for this specific issue, but I did check that I had the same envVars.txt with an old copy of environment variables which correspond to the one set in my env.

[MinuteReversal]

@albertosantini Thank you for your answer. Disable the pyhton extension and restart vscode. Caching of environment variables is solved. However, if the python extension is enabled, there will still be a cache of environment variables next time.

[anthonykim1]

@spydmobile Did you also have Python extension activated when you reproduced this issue?

Also those with Python extension activated, does same problem persist if you opt out of Python env experiment by adding:

  "python.experiments.optOutFrom": [
    "pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation"
  ],

into your settings.json?

Make sure to run Python Clear Cache and Reload after adding the setting.

[Guthman]

Silently overriding environment variables defined in and loaded from a .env file is very questionable.

[spydmobile]

@spydmobile Did you also have Python extension activated when you reproduced this issue?

Also those with Python extension activated, does same problem persist if you opt out of Python env experiment by adding:

  "python.experiments.optOutFrom": [
    "pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation"
  ],

into your settings.json?

Make sure to run Python Clear Cache and Reload after adding the setting.

yes @anthonykim1 I did, thanks.

[seidnerj]

I just wasted 3 hours because of this... 😡 I thought I was losing my mind!

[eriksendc]

I'm affected and also wasted probably 5+ hours because of this. When's this going to get fixed?

[tony-schumacher]

Affected as well and lost a lot of time finding this issue.

I removed those two keys manually when running the debug code, which helped me:

// https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/246222 
delete process.env.VSCODE_ENV_REPLACE;
delete process.env.VSCODE_ENV_PREPEND;

[jonathanmach]

+1

or b) to set python.envFile to an empty string.

This workaround worked for me

[patrickdundas]

This is cursed and should be very high priority. Installing the official python extension should not have this crazy negative impact.

@Tyriar (sorry you're the first maintainer I found) - any chance this can be prioritized somewhere? I'm sure others will be running into this and not finding the root cause, or this issue.

[Tyriar]

3 - Modify .env to: DATABASE_MONGO_HOST=localhost or delete the .env file 4 - Restart VS Code and open a new terminal

The way this is meant to work here is on 3 the terminal's with the "stale" environment get a yellow warning icon in their tabs, saying that the Python extension wants to change the environment.

On 4 it's a little trickier as we restore old terminals and I'm not so sure we track those stale environment across sessions when reconnecting. Perhaps we could carry over the stale environment state there too? Not restoring the terminals is an option, but that's arguably data loss.

@anthonykim1 could you look into this for July? It's not clear if this is an env var collection problem in core or a python ext problem

[patrickdundas]

3 - Modify .env to: DATABASE_MONGO_HOST=localhost or delete the .env file 4 - Restart VS Code and open a new terminal

The way this is meant to work here is on 3 the terminal's with the "stale" environment get a yellow warning icon in their tabs, saying that the Python extension wants to change the environment.

On 4 it's a little trickier as we restore old terminals and I'm not so sure we track those stale environment across sessions when reconnecting. Perhaps we could carry over the stale environment state there too? Not restoring the terminals is an option, but that's arguably data loss.

@anthonykim1 could you look into this for July? It's not clear if this is an env var collection problem in core or a python ext problem

In case this helps narrow it down: hitting "disable" on the ms-python.python official extension resolved this immediately for me. Installing the extension, without even running or opening a python file, caused this bug and broke my entire env for a PHP application

Thank you very much for the prioritization on this!

[anthonykim1]

Thank you all for looking into this and being patient.

In case this helps narrow it down: hitting "disable" on the ms-python.python official extension resolved this immediately for me. Installing the extension, without even running or opening a python file, caused this bug and broke my entire env for a PHP application

This is helpful!

It looks like multiple people who experienced this problem have had different experience when disabling the Python extension. I'll start investigating from the Python extension side first and then look into VS Code if I can't find the root cause in the extension.

Right now, I'm guessing https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/blob/81ee4de55b55fbddcd9e7a201c320b21a9dc3a3a/src/client/common/variables/environmentVariablesProvider.ts#L57-L58 that was part of https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/pull/19999/files

Please give me a thumbs up if disabling Python extension resolves(well not really "resolve" but makes your problem go away) your issue.

[labisda]

@albertosantini Thank you for your answer. Disable the pyhton extension and restart vscode. Caching of environment variables is solved. However, if the python extension is enabled, there will still be a cache of environment variables next time.

I was about to fix a simple bug in my application and suddenly encountered this issue. T^T Wasted my time debugging this error in my local machine T^T

Thank you! Disabling python extension in VS code works for me.

[anthonykim1]

Are folks able to still repro this on the latest release or pre-release of the Python extension?

I can't even get the environment variable in .env file to show up via echo:

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[anthonykim1]

Let me know if people experience different behavior, and please watch out if you experience anything strange as we are getting rid of pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation experiment around Wednesday of this week.

It seems like pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation may have been affecting .env variable caching as well. Feel free to directly ping me or file issue on Python extension if this behavior or some other behavior arise after later of this week. (I would say testing the behavior on Thursday and onward should be good as pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation would be gone by then)

[bitadmiral]

After disabling all MS python-related extensions, restarting VS Code, and then re-enabling, I no longer see this pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation experiment available in my settings.

While I'm not yet sure what my workflows around setting environment variables for my python projects will be going forward, I agree setting the environment variables should be explicitly controlled, and not have multiple ways to source the environment variables in different ways that could potentially clash. For example, in launch configurations, we can set the .env file explicitly:

{
            "name": "Python: Module",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "module": "controller",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "env": {
                     "ENV": "dev"
                   }
            "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.envs/.env",
}

I'm just not sure what is the best way to ensure my terminal sessions for my python projects automatically source my .env file (if I choose to configure my terminals that way). The Python extension currently has a straightforward way to configure whether we want our terminal sessions to auto-activate our python virtual environment, so I would like it to be something like that. Similarly, the newer Python Environments extension has commands to start a terminal with our virtual environment sourced. I would like to see such settings for choosing the .env file to source as well.

That said, it should be recognized that python .env files (and python "dotenv" files for that matter) differ in syntax from command files that are truly "sourced" into a shell session like bash. In this context, I think users will still want some way for their python environment files to be interpreted and then injected into their terminal sessions.

Or, I could be totally wrong and stuck in my ways, spoiled by the "experiment" of having my python environment variables set in my shell for me. After more thought, I suppose it may be better to make my python code conditionally call load_dotenv() if it detects it is running in a development environment (presumably set in some environment variable, using the terminal.integrated.env settings in VS Code perhaps). Normally, in production, environment variables would be set by whatever container the application is running in, outside of the application code. This aspect is essentially what I would like VS Code to help me simulate during development.

[bitadmiral]

Without the pythonTerminalEnvVarActivation experiment, what will be the purpose of the python.envFile setting going forward?

[anthonykim1]

@bitadmiral I'd refer you to https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/25294

[anthonykim1]

Couldnt repro and we are seeing loss of feature to even see contents from .env file

I'd refer to https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/25294

If you were to verify:

1. Have some contents in .env file
2. Have Python extension activated
3. Check in your terminal if you get those env vars in your terminal
4. (currently loss of feature) You wont see those variables at all in the terminal

[gavinmb]

Couldnt repro and we are seeing loss of feature to even see contents from .env file

I'd refer to microsoft/vscode-python#25294

If you were to verify:

1. Have some contents in .env file

2. Have Python extension activated

3. Check in your terminal if you get those env vars in your terminal

4. (currently loss of feature) You wont see those variables at all in the terminal

Can confirm, I'm having this same issue. This is breaking my Django workflow. The terminal used to automatically load the variables from .env, but now nothing loads at all from the .env file.

[alexr00]

Removing from the milestone as this was closed as not planned.