Spring gem loaded in wrong environment - ruby-on-rails

Question

Why does my spring gem load in the wrong (or all) environment(s)?
I have this in my Gemfile and spring gem is not listed anywhere else in the file:
group :development do
gem 'listen', '~> 3.1.5'
# Spring speeds up development by keeping your application running in the background. Read more: https://github.com/rails/spring
gem 'spring'
gem 'spring-watcher-listen', '~> 2.0.0'
end
When I ran bundle exec rails console test (for the test environment), spring processes started and the Listen module was loaded in the rails console. I made sure all spring processes were stopped beforehand.
To do a sanity check, I removed the whole development group above and bundled. Spring and listen gems were no longer loaded, as I expected.

Answer 1

I faced this misunderstanding in production.
Here's how I solved it:
You can also fix this issue permanently by upspringing (removing the spring gem from) your bin/ executables:
bin/spring binstub --remove --all
Or
spring binstub --remove --all
You can now run the command below to get into rails console in production
rails c --environment=production
Also, to avoid this from occurring in subsequent occasions endeavour to make sure that the spring gem is only present in development and test groups in your Gemfile.
Moreso, when you're in production make sure you always provide the --without development test argument to the bundle install command
bundle install --without development test
and not the usual or common
bundle install
Please note: As an indication, whenever you run the command rails c or rails console and you see the output below:
Running via Spring preloader in process 26651
WARNING: Spring is running in production. To fix this make sure the spring gem is only present in development and test groups in your Gemfile and make sure you always use bundle install --without development test in production
It's an indication that the spring gem is running in your production environment, and it should be stopped or removed entirely from your bin executables.
That's all.
I hope this helps

Answer 2

Spring is generally used through binstubs - did you install the binstubs? If so this is the file your rails command is running through.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
begin
load File.expand_path('../spring', __FILE__)
rescue LoadError => e
raise unless e.message.include?('spring')
end
APP_PATH = File.expand_path('../config/application', __dir__)
require_relative '../config/boot'
require 'rails/commands'
As you can see it will load spring anytime you use the rails command. There is no check for the environment. If you do not want to load spring you can use DISABLE_SPRING=1 rails c test.

Answer 3

According the spring gem github page, it looks like rails console will load up spring:
rails console, rails generate, rails runner
These execute the rails command you already know and love. If you run
a different sub command (e.g. rails server) then spring will
automatically pass it through to the underlying rails executable
(without the speed-up).
Also, this is worrying:
You must not install Spring on your production environment. To
prevent it from being installed, provide the --without development
test argument to the bundle install command
rails console (development) would make sense, but not rails console test (or another environment). It seems buggy to me, and a reason now why I don't like the gem.