This Gist aims to get some discussion going and throw some ideas around about introducing a more universal way to configure the environment/mode of Ruby applications and libraries (where applicable).
When speaking about the environment/mode (referred to as "environment" from this point on) we're speaking about the variable/option that specifies a alternative set of configuration options to use. That is, separate database options, hostnames and so on. A basic example of this is the standard Rails database configuration file: