`runnerImport` sets `process.env.NODE_ENV` to `development`

[hi-ogawa]

Describe the bug

This sounds similar to #18712, but this behavior from runnerImport was surprising.

import { runnerImport } from 'vite';

console.log('[before]', { NODE_ENV: process.env.NODE_ENV });
console.log('[runner-import!]');
await runnerImport('./package.json');
console.log('[after]', { NODE_ENV: process.env.NODE_ENV });

❯ node test.js
[before] { NODE_ENV: undefined }
[runner-import!]
[after] { NODE_ENV: 'development' }

---

My use case is in hi-ogawa/waku#5. I was using runnerImport before createBuilder API and the build is happening with process.env.NODE_ENV = "development".

Reproduction

https://stackblitz.com/edit/vitejs-vite-wkv3e3wu?file=test.js

Steps to reproduce

Open stackblitz

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 5.0 undefined
    CPU: (8) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9880H CPU @ 2.30GHz
    Memory: 0 Bytes / 0 Bytes
    Shell: 1.0 - /bin/jsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 20.19.1 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.19 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 10.8.2 - /usr/local/bin/npm
    pnpm: 8.15.6 - /usr/local/bin/pnpm
  npmPackages:
    vite: ^7.0.0 => 7.0.0

Used Package Manager

npm

Logs

No response

Validations

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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.

[Momena-akhtar]

I don’t see this assigned — I’d like to give it a try if it’s available.