Suggestion: Using the single .env file for simplicity about gatsby-firebase-simple-auth HOT 3 CLOSED

Hi! Thank you for the suggestion. Why do you think one file is better than two (.develop and .production)? I followed gatsby doc for best practices: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/environment-variables/#client-side-javascript
I didn't commit these files because they are in the gitignore and I wanted to avoid that people will fork the project and they will commit their secrets in the repository

from gatsby-firebase-simple-auth.

Okay, I read the docs. So, did I need to add NODE_ENV variable to production, test, or staging if I want to just one .env file?

from gatsby-firebase-simple-auth.

In the gatsby-config.js you can see:

require("dotenv").config({
  path: `.env.${process.env.NODE_ENV}`,
})

And it works in this way with more .env files:

By default gatsby supports only 2 environments:

If you run gatsby develop, then you will be in the ‘development’ environment.
If you run gatsby build or gatsby serve, then you will be in the ‘production’ environment.

I don't know if it's possible use only a .env file, maybe you can change gatsby-config in this way:

require("dotenv").config({
  path: `.env`,
})

If you want add more custom environment (for example ".env.staging") you can't override NODE_ENV variable but you have to use another variable: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/environment-variables/#additional-environments-staging-test-etc

const activeEnv =
  process.env.GATSBY_ACTIVE_ENV || process.env.NODE_ENV || "development"
require("dotenv").config({
  path: `.env.${activeEnv}`,
})

and build in this way from shell: GATSBY_ACTIVE_ENV=staging npm run develop

I understand you think one file is better, but this way is not bad too :)

from gatsby-firebase-simple-auth.