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Discussion on: External dependencies which read and act on environment variables?

 
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Dian Fay

I'd say Rails is a framework; a gem you're including in your Rails app is a utility library. It's "what your code runs on" vs "what it uses". You'd expect Rails to be an external system with external means of configuration; most people would not expect a database driver or webapp middleware to use configuration their application doesn't supply on its own.