Is there a way to unset a key using environment variables?

[grillorafael]

If I have a key with a default value set but I want to be able to unset in case I have a given ENV variable present. Is there a way to do it ?

[ktoso]

Set it to an empty string?

[havocp]

TL;DR not really.

The tricky thing about env vars is that they always contain strings, which means "VAR=null" comes through as the string "null" rather than a null value. No great solution to this... env vars only go so far. A more flexible solution in the long run can be to use env vars to specify a -Dconfig.file=$FILE kind of thing, where $FILE can be different for each distinct configuration you have, while including another file with common configuration.

There was some discussion on an issue I can't find of allowing JSON/HOCON to appear in env vars somehow... I don't remember exactly what that idea was but I think maybe it was a certain env var like CONFIG_OVERRIDES='{ "some.key" : null }' ... or it could be -Dconfig.env=MY_HOCON_VARNAME I don't know. Anyway that's a feature idea that could help with this sort of thing, many details to be worked out though.

[grillorafael]

Thanks for the answer @havocp and @ktoso