Ruby apps should set APP_ENV

[stefansundin]

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Tell us about your request
The Ruby community has decided that RACK_ENV and RAILS_ENV are complicated to use (and used incorrectly a lot). So they decided to add APP_ENV, the one variable to rule them all.

Elastic Beanstalk is setting RACK_ENV=production as a default for new Ruby apps. It should start setting APP_ENV=production as well.

Is this request specific to an Elastic Beanstalk platform?
Ruby

Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
It's not hard to set new variables, but better defaults would make things easier for newbies.

Are you currently working around this issue?
I set APP_ENV=production manually after creating an app.

Additional context

• https://github.com/rack/rack/blob/d0218ed43eb4f47bfba614b4671577142dbdbad0/lib/rack/server.rb#L182-L187
• https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra/blob/a4dd24add24f2dd0e7299b9e68e12038138294d3/README.md#environments
• Introduce APP_ENV and remove RACK_ENV sinatra/sinatra#984

In addition, RACK_ENV=production is not an intended value (as seen in the rack code linked above). It has always been intended to be set to either development, deployment, or none. Unfortunately, Heroku and other websites have been telling Ruby developers to set RACK_ENV and RAILS_ENV to the same value, so this mistake is very common. For APP_ENV, they allow production and other values.

I think the default RACK_ENV value should be changed to deployment. This may have some backwards compatibility concerns, but it is the proper value. One way to deal with this is to also start setting RAILS_ENV=production which should fix this concern for Rails developers.

I also think it would be nice if there was a better way to set default environment variables through .ebextensions somehow. Something like Heroku lets you do via an app.json file (example).

Thanks!

[labisso]

Thanks for the suggestion @stefansundin! I think we can do this with fewer backwards-compatibility concerns in our upcoming AL2-based Ruby platform. Changing it in our existing platform needs some more research though.

[taylor-anderson821]

Reopening. Inadvertently closed when removing the Proposed tag.

[1tonyca]

Closing older issue that we are no longer considering, please do re-open if this is still relevant.