How can I make a custom environment in rails a default environment?

Question

i created a custom staging environment in my rails app by adding new file config/environments/staging.rb, same as config/environments/development.rb and then added database config config/database.yml

staging:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/staging.sqlite3
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

now, i want to make staging the default environment of my rails application instead of development.How to achieve it?

Answer 1

Ideally you have to set environment variable in .bashrc like

  export RAILS_ENV=staging

because rails is fully dependent on environment variable. But like you said

adding RAILS_ENV in ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file of the user. will make this application depent on the console, shouldn't it just work independent of ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file?

Obviously, this is another option. Include this line at the top of config/boot.rb

ENV["RACK_ENV"] = ENV['RAILS_ENV'] || ENV['RACK_ENV'] || "staging"

This will work everywhere. I have tested in following places

1. Rails 4
2. Rake
3. Server
4. Console
5. dbconsole
6. It will pick the environment if it is set in bashrc or zshrc etc.