For development, in most cases the default configuration is enough. However, if you need to adjust the database configuration, email settings, or any other setting (any of the settings described in Chapter 2, Installing Redash, under the Redash environment settings section), you do so with environment variables.

To avoid having to export these variables manually, you can use a .env file and the bin/run helper script. By invoking any command with the bin/run prefix, it will load your environment variables from the .env file and then run your command, for example:

bin/run ./manage.py check_settings