`NODE_ENV` equals `development` in PostCSS during `vite build`

Describe the bug

I’m trying to use purge css plugin with PostCSS, but I’ve noticed that it doesn’t work automatically because the NODE_ENV is set to development instead of production during vite build.

Reproduction

https://github.com/KubaJastrz/vite-postcss-node-env-repro

1. clone the repo
2. install deps - yarn
3. build production bundle - yarn build
4. observe "development" being logged (coming from tailwind.config.js)
5. generated css file is over 1MB, while it should be much smaller after purging unused classes

System Info

• required vite version: 1.0.0-rc.4
• required Operating System: windows 10
• required Node version: 12.11.0

[daychongyang]

Or, you can use the .env file in a specific mode to specify the value of NODE_ENV.

In package.json you can just make it like the code below:

{ 
    "scripts": {
        "dev": " vite --mode=development",
	"build": "vite build --mode=production",
    }
}

In .env.development

NODE_ENV=development

In .env.production

NODE_ENV=production

Related source code

[KubaJastrz]

Thanks @mitchbne. That’s exactly what I did in my project for the time being.