Disable specified WordPress plugins in your development environment. Useful for plugins that either make network calls you don't want when working (eg, auto-posting to Facebook), or for plugins that rely on services only available in production (eg, Varnish).

disable-plugins-in-development.php

<?php
/**
 * Disable specified plugins in development environment.
 * 
 * This is a "Must-Use" plugin. Code here is loaded automatically before regular plugins load.
 * This is the only place from which regular plugins can be disabled programatically.
 * 
 * Place this code in a file in WP_CONTENT_DIR/mu-plugins or specify a custom location 
 * by setting the WPMU_PLUGIN_URL and WPMU_PLUGIN_DIR constants in wp-config.php.
 * 
 * This code depends on a server environment variable of WP_ENV, which I set 
 * to "development" or "production" in each particular server/environment.
 */

/* Disable specified plugins in development environment */
if (empty($_SERVER['WP_ENV']) || $_SERVER['WP_ENV'] != 'production') {
	$plugins = array(
		'add-link-to-facebook/add-link-to-facebook.php',
		'varnish-http-purge/varnish-http-purge.php',
	);
	require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/plugin.php');
	deactivate_plugins($plugins);
}