Do load .env.local in Rails' test environment

[erwanst]

This basically reverts https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv/pull/280.

The above-mentioned PR says:

When using .env.local for tests, the tests are not transparent and can't be executed for example on a CI server. As the documentation says, the .env.local is here for local overwrites. They should not overwrite a test specific variable. Tests should be run on every machine in every environment and shouldn't require any specification of environment variables.

While that description matches the expected behavior of Dotenv, the implementation goes too far (1) and even contradicts other bits of Dotenv's current behavior (2).

About (1), a quote from the Github user named jakedouglas:

Tests should be run on every machine in every environment and shouldn't require any specification of environment variables.

At least one very common example of this idea not holding water is that most Rails applications require a database, and the URL of that database may vary between different developer machines, and between developer machines and a CI service. Given this PR, if a developer happens to have a database setup that doesn't match the application's defaults (common), they need to specify the database URL in both .env.local and .env.test.local in order to do local development comprehensively.

About (2), anything that .env.local could do to the test environment variables before it became ignored for that environment can now be done with .env.test.local, often at the cost of tediously duplicating variables from the currently-ignored .env.local. This contradicts the behavior intended by PR #280 and consistency would dictate that .env.test.local be removed altogether. Only then the test variables would truly be guaranteed to always stay the same as far as Dotenv is concerned.

Since (1) shows that local development might require local test variables for legitimate reasons, removing .env.test.local is not a valid option and it would make sense to instead restore loading .env.local for the test environment.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[dembskoi]

Hey @bkeepers, could you please take a look at this request? It looks very relevant. Thank you

[douglaspetrin]

Yeah, a little annoying it. Just found it and created another "workaround" file .env.test.local which now is working. dotenv (2.7.6)