Best practices using Blueprints in a production/staging environment setting

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A simpler example might be if I have the following code that sets the env vars for both services in the Blueprint.

For example the env var is the source of an inline app:

services:
  - name: my-staging-app 
    branch: staging
    envVars:
      - key: APP_DOMAIN
        value: example.com

  - name: my-production-app 
    branch: production
    envVars:
      - key: APP_DOMAIN
        value: example.com

If the Blueprint is deployed to staging
and I want to change the domain to something else

Option 1:

  • I update the Blueprint file changing my-staging-app envVars key to something-else.com
  • I also update the Blueprint file changing my-production-app envVars key to something-else.com also
  • I update some code ready for the new update
  • I deploy to staging for testing
  • staging env vars have been updated
  • production env vars have been updated but the update to production is premature because I haven’t tested it yet, so potential for breakage if new domain and old code don’t align
  • merge staging to production
  • everything should now work as env vars and code align

Option 2:

  • I update my-staging-app envVars key to something-else.com
  • I leave the my-production-app envVars as it was
  • I update some code ready for the new update
  • I deploy to staging for testing
  • staging env vars have been updated and production env vars have not
  • I test it on staging and all looks good
  • merge staging to production, uh-oh, I can’t merge staging to production because the production service doesn’t have the correct env vars yet

So before merging I need to add another step:

  • I update the Blueprint file again changing my-production-app envVars key to something-else.com
  • I deploy to staging
  • staging env vars have not been updated, production env vars have been updated
  • I then merge staging to master
  • everything should now work as env vars and code align

This process would be better if:

  • I update the Blueprint file changing my-staging-app envVars key to something-else.com
  • I also update the Blueprint file changing my-production-app envVars key to something-else.com also
  • I update some code ready for the new update
  • I deploy to staging for testing and only staging code and staging environment settings are updated concurrently
  • I merge to production
  • Then production code and production environment settings are updated at the same time

I read and tested this Best practices for staging & prod environments, like a pipeline, using blueprints - #2 by anniesexton which is a similar problem but the two solutions seem to skirt around the issue of setting environment settings.