I use the package dotenv and the dotenv.config(); function to load my config from a .env file. I would like my default .env file to contain the config:

DEBUG=my-app:*,-my-app:verbose*
DEBUG_COLORS=1

So that developers, with the default .env file will have a good experience.

I have found that I can get debug to honor my DEBUG environment variable with this snippet of code in my config file:

dotenv.config();
const DEBUG: false | string = process.env.DEBUG && process.env.DEBUG !== 'false' ? process.env.DEBUG : false;
if (isString(DEBUG) && DEBUG !== 'false') {
    console.error(colors.yellow(`🐞 enabling debug outout for: "${DEBUG}". You can edit, or disable this in the .env file`));
    Debug.enable(DEBUG);
}

but as far as I can tell, there is no way to get debug to switch the DEBUG_COLORS config over–once the package initializes and reads it from process.env, that's it. Unfortunately this doesn't work in this case.

Request: add a debug.init() method that can be called to re-read all of the environment configs–this way, once I know my environment is setup correctly, I can call debug.init and trust things will work.

I have run into the same exact issue with the debug package in the browser, though I did not know about debug.enableat the time. This point is moot, just wanted to provide it to share some insights with how I'm using it.

I have some FE code that says:

if (environment.local && !localStorage.debug) {
  localStorage.debug = '...';
  console.warn(`debug initialized–reload your browser and enable verbose logging in the console to see the output`);
}

In the front end case, I need to ship a change that uses debug.enable, and override the log to use console.log, and that will let me improve the experience.