support local environment variables and dev-specific settings in netlify.toml, with optional context flag

[swyxio]

@DavidWells already has a prototype of this.

related:

• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-dev-plugin/issues/114
• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-dev-plugin/issues/60
• also raised in community
• also raised in slack (internal channel) for an enterprise customer: https://netlify.slack.com/archives/C8VD55Q23/p1562004405020500

[iamskok]

@DavidWells Is there any more progress on it? I’d love to see this feature implemented 🤩

[dan-dr]

yeah hope it doesn't sound too harsh but netlify dev is pretty useless in my case if I have to use the admin UI to change environment variables.

Another way to go about it is to check if the environment variables exist already and only use the admin UI ones if they don't.

Is there a workaround someone is aware of?

Edit:
Using this in the meanwhile

const env = require('dotenv').config()
console.log(`dotenv keys: ${Object.keys(env.parsed).join(', ') || 'nothing in .env'}`)
for (let k in env.parsed) {
  process.env[k] = env.parsed[k]
}

[cinderisles]

As a workaround, set your variable in the UI to the value you want it to be while developing, which Netlify Dev will use. Then use netlify.toml to set up other contexts, which will override the ones in the UI when needed.

[context.production.environment]
  MY_ENV = "something for prod"