[🐛 BUG] Unable to load configurations from an env file

[chongli6319]

What went wrong? 🤔

Hi,

So we prefer to keep all our configurations in a env file rather than parameters in the main file, so we found the following from the doc.

Configuring with a .env file

All parameters can also be set to any values and stored as a list of key-value pairs in a text file for your Gui instance to consume. The name of this file is the one provided as the env_filename parameter to the Gui constructor.

If you have such a configuration file, then the value associated with a configuration parameter will override the one provided in the run() method of your Gui instance.

It sounds like if we provide an env file and specify it with the env_filename parameter it should override anything provided in the run() function. However, for some reason, it didn't work.

Expected Behavior

As an example, I created a simple .env file and it only contains one line:
run_browser=False
and I specified the env_filename by doing the following:
Gui(env_filename=".env").run()

I expected taipy to NOT open a browser

Steps to Reproduce Issue

1.create a .env file and put line run_browser=False
2.specify env_filename in your Gui constructor in the main.py file like Gui(env_filename=".env").run()
3.execute taipy run main.py

Solution Proposed

I don't have a solution yet but I spent some time digging the code and here's what I found:

• the function that is used to handle this env_filename parameter resides in the gui/config.py file, function signature def _build_config(self, root_dir, env_filename, kwargs)
• the actual logic is in the block if os.path.isfile(env_file_abs_path):
• maybe I misunderstood but it seems this line should overwrite the value config[key] = value if config[key] is None else type(config[key])(value) # type: ignore
• however, the config already has a default value, for example, run_browser=True by default
• if it can NOT override existing configs (because they may have default values), how does it work? Or did I misunderstand the doc?
  Thank you.

[PS]
just want to mention that normally boolean type environment variables are not supported so I also tried something like run_browser=0 but still no luck

Screenshots

Additional Context

Acceptance Criteria

• A unit test reproducing the bug is added.
• Any new code is covered by a unit tested.
• Check code coverage is at least 90%.
• The bug reporter validated the fix.
• Related issue(s) in taipy-doc are created for documentation and Release Notes are updated.

Code of Conduct

• I have checked the existing issues.
• I am willing to work on this issue (optional)