The initial version of the dotenv package, version 0.0.1, marked the beginning of a simple yet powerful way to manage environment variables in Node.js applications. This early iteration, released in July 2013, offered a fundamental solution: loading environment variables from a .env file into process.env. The package, licensed under the BSD license, aimed to simplify configuration management by separating sensitive information, such as API keys and database credentials, from the main codebase. It provided developers with a convenient method to configure applications for different environments (development, testing, production) without modifying the code itself.
The core functionality revolved around parsing the .env file and making its contents accessible throughout the application via the standard process.env object. This made accessing configurations extremely simply. With this first version using dotenv required minimum setup and was fast to add to a new project. The package included development dependencies like mocha and should, indicating its focus on testability and code quality from the start while remaining minimal. Notably, the provided data lacks details about the "previous stable version," making a direct comparison impossible.
The repository link indicates the package was hosted on GitHub under the user scottmotte, which is an extra help for trust and discoverability on the web. For developers, dotenv 0.0.1 provided a straightforward method for managing configuration, setting the stage for the more fully featured versions that followed and establishing a pattern that would later be adopted by many projects.
The are not vulnerabilities for the version 0.0.1 of the package dotenv