Protect development database from tests when RAILS_ENV is set

[MarkDBlackwell]

No description provided.

[akshatpradhan]

I'm not sure I understand why this is here.

[MarkDBlackwell]

Please see Rails issue 7175 for a discussion of the problem.

# It's dangerous to use `||=' when setting ENV['RAILS_ENV'] here; see
# https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/7175
ENV["RAILS_ENV"] = 'test'

If by your question you mean: why did I change it to '=':

Because in some cases and with some software, the environment variable RAILS_ENV may be predefined with some value. Then, using '||=', running the tests will fail to change that value to 'test', because it already exists. This actually forces the initial database-dropping step to destroy the database of whatever environment RAILS_ENV was predefined to. This may be 'development' or 'production'. It normally makes a fresh, empty 'test' environment database during testing. I have experienced this loss, BTW.

If by your question you mean: why do they have it as '||=':

It could be motivated by continuous integration servers running tests in a special Rails environment. My source for the possibility is this comment. However, for continuous integration, setting RAILS_ENV externally is unnecessary. Or if desired, the line can be changed to check specifically for the value 'CI'.

Dave Chemlinsky has explained he didn't want "to force it to 'test' because that ties everybody's hands." However, if we ourselves want to be sure it is 'test', that won't hurt anyone.

Never when running specs (which require spec/spec_helper.rb) would one want to use any Rails environment other than 'test', right? So, we might as well set it definitely to 'test'.

If you don't mind the slight frustration under certain circumstances of losing your own development database, it's okay with me if you want to leave this alone in the project. :)

[akshatpradhan]

i'm going to put this onto milestone2, but I will keep the pull request open.