Inconsistent behaviour about envvars

[kud]

I'm reading https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html and I've got some troubles.

I'm setting our cypress configuration on cypress.json. Which is great. However, I can't set there the baseUrl as we have different url for each dev machine like:

• app.colleague-a.com:8000
• app.colleague-b.com:8000

So by reading https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html, I can see two things

1/ I am able to use a cypress.env.json to set some envvars, which is great, because we've got multiple projects with cypress so CYPRESS_baseUrl in shell is impossible + we don't want to pollute our shell.

2/ I read there https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html#Overriding-Configuration I can override standard configuration keys by using the same word like baseUrl like CYPRESS_baseUrl. However, said in the 1/, I don't want to use shell envvars. So I thought, writing in cypress.env.json could be the trick like:

• cypress.json

{
  "fixturesFolder": "__tests__/cypress/fixtures",
  "integrationFolder": "__tests__/cypress/integration",
  "pluginsFile": "__tests__/cypress/plugins/index.js",
  "screenshotsFolder": "__tests__/cypress/screenshots",
  "supportFile": "__tests__/cypress/support/index.js",
  "videosFolder": "__tests__/cypress/videos",
  "video": false
}

• cypress.env.json

{
  "baseUrl": "app.colleague-a.com:8000"
}

but in fact, it doesn't work at all as it does this (when debugging config):

{
  baseUrl: null,
  env: { baseUrl: 'http://journal.erwann.contexte:8000/' },
}

which is quite logical but does not do the magic said there: https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html#Overriding-Configuration (yes, the example was for the shell but we could imagine it worked with any way to write envvars).

So I'd like to ask you to make a choice:

• either you make https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html#Overriding-Configuration work with any way to configure envvars
• either you stop to make this https://docs.cypress.io/guides/guides/environment-variables.html#Overriding-Configuration
• either you specify in each way where you can't override, in Downsides : "you can't override configuration"

Note that it's just my opinion, and I'll use a workaround for the moment which is there: https://gist.github.com/ryanhaney/c586a080fa2a90c12328b762ba8266c5

I want to be able to override configuration in cypress.env.json. :)

Thank you for your time.

[kud]

My current workaround:

plugins/index.js:

module.exports = (on, config) => {
  config.baseUrl = config.env.baseUrl

  return config
}

[jennifer-shehane]

There is a long thread involving env vars and baseUrl here: #909

[kud]

Thank you @jennifer-shehane :)