Pkg: How to bake NODE_ENV=production into executable?

[Deilan]

How to bake NODE_ENV=production into executable?

There's a --options CLI flag used to bake v8 options into executable, but I can't see if it could be used for that or not.

[Clement-TS]

You may consider creating a bundle.js file:

process.env.NODE_ENV = "production"
const app = require('./app.js')
app.run()

And run pkg on it.

[ksmithut]

When you run the packaged app ./packaged-app or whatever, just run it with NODE_ENV=production ./packaged-app

[Deilan]

@ksmithut Thanks, but I can't force a client to pass this arg manually. Just need to start my-app.exe with a NODE_ENV=production already embedded there at package-time.

@Clement-TS Thanks for the workaround. It would be great if there could exist a more elegant way out-of-the-box though. :)

[jjhesk]

are there any ways to read local env or config file?

[ksmithut]

I also use the dotenv package which was able to read a .env file that exists next to the binary produced by pkg

[ksmithut]

But I guess if you can’t have a client change their environment variable, then forcing them to create an env file probably won’t be better.

[tomgao365]

in windows, you can run cmd.exe like this:

SET NODE_ENV=production && app.exe

[Deilan]

@PranayAgarwal Well, usually it's exactly opposite: if nothing's set, then it's development. See Express.js or Koa.js as an example.

[shaunwarman]

I'd love to bake an auth token into the executable. We have some build scripts we've compiled into an executable using pkg. It's all internal, but I still don't want an auth token in text. Just want our locked down CI to add that auth token for the code to pull in at compile time.

[tw0517tw]

Agree with lock down access tokens at build time.

[shaunwarman]

Here's an example of what I am currently doing.

I just add the token (cat $TOKEN >> .env or similar) in at CI and use this CI to pkg the tool.

[beac0n]

@Deilan : Why don't you just set NODE_ENV to production as default and overwrite it with NODE_ENV=development if you are in development?

You control the development environment, so that should be an easy thing to do.
You could do something like this in a global config.ts file:

const PRODUCTION = 'production';
export const NODE_ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV || PRODUCTION;

If you want to ALWAYS use production mode when in pkg binaries, you could just check for process.pkg (https://github.com/zeit/pkg#snapshot-filesystem), and then set NODE_ENV accordingly:

export const NODE_ENV = (<any>process).pkg ? PRODUCTION : process.env.NODE_ENV;

I think this issue can be closed, because you can set the env vars yourself in a init script by checking for process.pkg

[jamesdixon]

@beac0n this actually worked great. Nice solution

[panpansh]

Thank you for your reply dear @beac0n ! So I was able to solve my headache !
We don't need to use NODE_ENV at all. Just check if process.pkg exist. process.pkg == production maybe for some of you like me.
However the code remains present in the package.
If there is a simple method to make everything cleaner, I am interested (like removing dead code (dev)) otherwise it is not a big deal ... Thank you again :)

exports.is_production = process.pkg ? true : false;
const cwd = this.is_production ? process.cwd() : __dirname;

if (!this.is_production) {
    // here (for me) == NODE_ENV=development
}