How to add a linux environment variable for different language (PHP or RUBY)

Question

I would like to add a linux environment variable for my differents applications written in PHP and Ruby.

Its goal is to differntiate between 'production' and 'development' linux environment.

How to have an linux environment variable (ex : APPLICATION_ENV='production') that can be accessed with PHP and Ruby?

thanks

Edit 1 :

My first solution was :

for Apache/PHP in vhost :

SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV 'production'

for Ruby :

export APPLICATION_ENV='production'

puts ENV['APPLICATION_ENV']

However, this is two places to the same value... There are no solution to merge it in one place ? par exemple to use /etc/environment

Edit :

The answer of my question is detailed here : Inserting Variable Headers in Apache

Answer 1

A simple solution to have a central location for your variable would be to put it in /etc/environment and include it in /etc/init.d/httpd.

$ vim /etc/environment
APPLICATION_ENV=production

$ vim /etc/init.d/httpd
if [ -f /etc/environment ]; then
  . /etc/environment
fi

Then restart apache with /etc/init.d/httpd restart and it should be OK.

If you are using ubuntu 16.04 or similar, replace /etc/init.d/httpd with /etc/init.d/apache2

If you don't want to include environment file to apache, you can directly put your code in /etc/apache2/envvars for example at the end of the file: export HELLO='dear'