functions NODE_ENV === production

[kentcdodds]

Ok, so here's a bit of an issue that I think will confuse a lot of people: netlify dev actually runs as if everything's in production (NODE_ENV=production), BUT it runs your develop script rather than your start script.

This is problematic because I expect to be able to run everything in development (like NODE_ENV=development) because the script is called dev and it runs my develop script. So it's confusing that my functions would run with NODE_ENV=production.

Does that make sense? I think this could probably be resolved if netlify dev just basically replaced netlify-lambda and ran the netlify-lambda serve script for me. What would be best is if netlify dev could find the script in my package.json that runs netlify-lambda serve and just run that, because my scripts looks like this:

"functions:build": "netlify-lambda build netlify/functions",
"functions:dev": "dotenv -e ./netlify/.env netlify-lambda serve netlify/functions",

If netlify dev just found the script that runs netlify-lambda serve and ran that, then I think this issue would be resolved as would netlify/netlify-dev-plugin#61 and netlify/netlify-dev-plugin#60.

[swyxio]

hello! just replying to acknowledge everything thats been filed - caught us at a bad time as we're at Reactathon all weekend - but we will go through every single issue and address them as soon as we can. thank you very much

[swyxio]

i've just been looking into this. there seem to be a bunch of issues rolled up here so i wanted to tease them out.

• with netlify dev, inside a function the NODE_ENV env var is currently whatever you had it before. we could look into manually setting it to development, however it equally isn't equal to production either. looking at https://github.com/kentcdodds/kentcdodds.com/blob/master/netlify/functions/contact.js#L38 i can't see why this has any difference. can you doublecheck that echo $NODE_ENV in your terminal doesn't return production for some weird reason?

• i just tested how this works with netlify-lambda (using C-R-A-L) and it seems to actually have NODE_ENV=production which is wrong and what you're complaining about! weird!

• on the topic of just making netlify dev do the same work as netlify-lambda, this is something @biilmann is currently debating. there are separate considerations with how this would work with our upcoming multistage buildbot and also abstraction level (do we want to bundle webpack for users or let users pick their tools).

[tysonmatanich]

When I running netlify dev, process.env.NODE_ENV is always undefined. I would expect netlify dev to set it to 'development'. I would also expect other Netlify build environment variables to get set such as CONTEXT.

[jonathan-mothership]

Even with the following,

[build.environment]
  NODE_ENV="development"

I get this:

netlify dev -c "env" | grep NODE_ENV
NODE_ENV=production

I seem to have to do this to force it for yarn:

netlify dev -c "yarn --production=false"

[eduardoboucas]

Hi! I wanted to share a couple of updates on the items mentioned in this issue.

I would expect netlify dev to set it to 'development'. I would also expect other Netlify build environment variables to get set such as CONTEXT.

@tysonmatanich This should be available in the latest version of CLI.

Even with the following,

[build.environment]
  NODE_ENV="development"

@jonathan-mothership variables declared in build.environment are now picked up by netlify dev.

---

As for making NODE_ENV=development by default, it's something we're looking into and we'll update this issue as soon as there's any progress there.

Thanks all!

[erezrokah]

Adding more context to clear up confusion.

1. netlify-lambda uses Webpack under the hood. Webpack inlines environments variables so netlify dev cannot override them. As a workaround you can use a custom Webpack config:

const webpack = require('webpack');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      // mirror Netlify Dev envs
      ...process.env,
      // force NODE_ENV to 'development'
      NODE_ENV: 'development',
    }),
  ],
};

2. The current default for NODE_ENV is undefined for both netlify dev and our production environment, so I'm inclined to keep it that way.

I'll keep this issue open for a bit to allow more feedback.

[erezrokah]

I'll keep this issue open for a bit to allow more feedback

Closing the issue. We're still open for feedback so please comment if you feel this is something we should change.

[BiskremMuhammad]

I added a custom env var to come over this issue on Environment variables sections so i called it: NEXT_PUBLIC_NETLIFY_NODE_ENV and added different values depending on deploy context