Set module.exports to an async function?

Questions and Answers Strapi Backend
1
System Information
  • Strapi Version: 3.6.2
  • Operating System: Ubuntu 20
  • Database: Postgres
  • Node Version: 14.19.3
  • NPM Version: 6.14.17

The password for my Strapi database is stored in GCP’s Secret Manager. The call to retrieve the password from the Secret Manager returns a Promise. So, I thought I could simply put the following in my database.js file:

module.exports = async ({env}) => {
  const password = await getThePasswordPromiseFromGcp();
  return {
      defaultConnection: 'default',
      connections: {
        default: {
          connector: 'bookshelf',
          settings: {
            client: 'postgres',
            host: `/cloudsql/${env('INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME')}`,
            database: env('DATABASE_NAME'),
            username: env('DATABASE_USERNAME'),
            password: password
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

However, this causes the following error on startup:

debug ⛔️ Server wasn't able to start properly.install: my_project@0.0.0
error TypeError: Cannot convert undefined or null to object
    at Function.values (<anonymous>)
    at Object.load (/project/node_modules/strapi-database/lib/connector-registry.js:17:39)
    at DatabaseManager.initialize (/project/node_modules/strapi-database/lib/database-manager.js:37:21)
    at Strapi.load (/project/node_modules/strapi/lib/Strapi.js:354:19)
    at async Strapi.start (/project/node_modules/strapi/lib/Strapi.js:196:9)

So, what is the correct way to asynchronously initialize Strapi’s database?