NODE_ENV environment variable under webpacker:compile is fixed at "production"

[finfin]

Scenario

Our system has three stages: development, staging
Thus we need three separate webpack config

What Happened

RAILS_ENV controls what configuration webpacker will use using webpacker.yml
NODE_ENV controls what webpacker will use to customize webpack config

It works as expected when deploying in production
But when NODE_ENV is set to staging, webpack config seems to always loads production.js

After some digging, I found that node_env is forced to "production" when deploying

webpacker/lib/tasks/webpacker/compile.rake

Line 29 in c506521

Webpacker.with_node_env("production") do

But under our scenario we need node_env other then production (even when deploying)

Possible solution

A customizable property in webpacker.yml that can assign what node_env we're using (or what webpack config custom file to use)

[jakeNiemiec]

‘staging’ is not a valid ‘NODE_ENV’. If you are deploying to a staging server I would recommend setting it to ‘production’.

There are several other issues discussing this at length, it would probably be better to actively talk about this on one of those.

[finfin]

Duplicate of #1395 #1558 #1696