What's the proper CONTEXT for local builds?

[ehmicky]

When builds are run locally (through the Netlify CLI or programmatically), should the CONTEXT be:

1. production?
2. A new context such as local?

One concern I have with using production is that users might have production settings (URLs, databases, etc.) that should not be used on local machines. Having a separate local context would allow users to distinguish between both environment in their configuration file (with the context.* property).

What are your thoughts?
@DavidWells @verythorough @kitop @fool

[DavidWells]

Here is a related CLI issue netlify/cli#275

It should work similar to the netlify deploy. Right now the default is preview-deploy unless the --prod flag is passed.

However, when you run a local build, it makes the most sense to build for prod because the next step in the flow would be netlify deploy

The ideal CI flow would be:

netlify build # builds for prod (same as netlify build --context prod)
netlify deploy --prod # deploys to prod (same as netlify build --context prod)

[ehmicky]

Since netlify build and netlify deploy are two stages of the same process, shouldn't they share the same logic when it comes to contexts?

• netlify build: context preview-deploy
• netlify build --prod: context production

[DavidWells]

I don’t think so. ‘netlify build’ should run the prod build

[erquhart]

Agreed w/ @DavidWells - when running build through the CLI, build feels less like a distinct binary and more like a command. It helps to think of it this way:

• netlify dev: builds for local development
• netlify build: builds for production

Frontend devs are used to build scripts producing production builds.

[ehmicky]

Sounds good. Done at #849.

[askrzypczak]

is it safe to say that netlify dev should NOT have context=production?

I recently updated to 3.7.1 from 2.70 and this is breaking my dev environment. the netliy.toml context.production.environment is being injected into my dev env.