Since I had to check it myself and could only confirm that what you wrote was correct, I started looking around and found this post regarding SetEnv, SetEnvIfand RewriteRule. It SetEnvdoesn't seem to display for RewriteCondand if I use your example:
SetEnvIf APPLICATION_ENV ^(.*)$ APPLICATION_ENV=development
, app_dev.php. RewriteRule:
RewriteRule .* - [E=APPLICATION_ENV:development,NE]
, SetEnv ( Apache 2.2.22).
julp , :
The SetEnv directive runs late during request processing meaning that directives
such as SetEnvIf and RewriteCond will not see the variables set with it.