How dangerous is it to use ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment in production app ?

Question

I wrote a mock Coredata manager in order to test some classes in unit tests.

I have about 10 classes that get's NSManagedObjectContext from a class called DatabaseManager. I have decided if unit tests are running, don't deal with actual Coredata NSManagedObjectContext but redirect to Mock Coredata Class to get the NSManagedObjectContext.

func getContext() -> NSManagedObjectContext {
    if ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["XCTestConfigurationFilePath"] == nil 
    {
        return persistentContainer.viewContext
    }
    else
    {
        return MockDatabaseController.instance.managedObjectContext()
    }
}

This works pretty well in Unit tests and debugging and when distributed thru adhoc too.

But my concern is if it ever fails to get the correct value from ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["XCTestConfigurationFilePath"] app will probably be useless.

How viable is it to use ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["XCTestConfigurationFilePath"] in production code ?

Answer 1

I would use Swift conditional compilation along with -D flags passed in the build arguments to make sure that the code was only active in test environments and never had the opportunity to make it into production.