README

Auto-loads .env then .env.local into the environment at Composer autoload time. It replaces helhum/dotenv-connector + a custom adapter package with a single plain library — no Composer plugin, no extra config, no allow-plugins entry, no generated include file.

Install

composer require dkm/dotenv-autoload

That's the whole integration. The package's autoload.files entry runs src/load.php whenever vendor/autoload.php is loaded.

Behaviour

• Loads <project-root>/.env, then <project-root>/.env.local. .env holds shared defaults; .env.local carries per-instance overrides.
• Project root is resolved via Composer\InstalledVersions::getRootPackage(), so it works even when this package is installed as a symlinked path repo (where dirname(__DIR__, N) would point into packages/...).
• Uses Symfony Dotenv load(): a variable already set in the real environment (or in .env) is not overwritten by .env.local. Set DOTENV_OVERRIDE=1 to switch to overload() so .env.local wins.
• Skips entirely when APP_ENV is already set in the environment.

Boundary (important)

Env vars are exposed when vendor/autoload.php is loaded — i.e. on web requests and in CLI subprocesses (e.g. the typo3 binary invoked from Composer scripts). They are not exposed inline inside the running Composer process.

So this is safe for:

• application runtime, and
• Composer scripts that shell out to a binary (typo3 ...).

It is not sufficient for:

• a Composer plugin, or
• an inline PHP-callback Composer script ("Vendor\\Class::method"),

that reads these env vars during composer install/update. If you ever add one of those and it needs .env values, keep helhum/dotenv-connector for that project instead.