How useful is $EvaluationEnvironment?

Question

Bug introduced in 10.0 and persisting through 11.3

A support case with the identification [CASE:3618534] was created.

[...] I filed a report with our development team raising the issues [...]

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$EvaluationEnvironment was supposed to be a panacea for: Good way to discriminate between Mathematica/PlayerPro/CDFPlayer

But from my experience it is not full working in a "desktop" area.

The remaining question is: I don't have time to check everything, could you? :)

Working:

• "WebEvaluation"

• "WebAPI"

• "WebForm"

• "Subkernel" (fixed somewhere around 11.2)

I'm not sure

• "Session" - it works well but all others that fail return "Session" so tough to count on it

• "WebLoad" not clear in comparison to "WebAPI"

• "RemoteSession", "WebServer", "CloudCDF", "PlugInCDF", "WSTP" - not tested

Not working:

• "CDF"

• "Script"

• "Scheduled"

Answer 1

The bug is confirmed and a workaround is available in the linked topic.

Nothing to do here now so I will move the code part of the question to this wiki answer to remove it from an unanswered stack and make a terse list on top.

Code samples to reproduce specific values of $EvaluationEnvironment:

• "WebEvaluation"

  CloudEvaluate[$EvaluationEnvironment]
  

• "WebAPI"

  CloudDeploy[
    APIFunction[{"x" -> String}, $EvaluationEnvironment &]
  ] //  URLExecute[#, {"x" -> "100"}, "JSON"] &
  

• "WebForm"

  CloudDeploy[FormFunction[{"x" -> String}, $EvaluationEnvironment &]]
  

• "Subkernel"

  ParallelEvaluate[{$KernelID, $EvaluationEnvironment}, Kernels[]]
  

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• "WebLoad"

  CloudDeploy@Delayed@{$EvaluationEnvironment, DateList[]}
  

---

• "CDF"

   SystemOpen @ CDFDeploy[
     "test.cdf"
   , Dynamic[{RandomReal[], $EvaluationEnvironment}, UpdateInterval -> 1]
   ]
  

• "Script"

  path = FileNameJoin[{$HomeDirectory, "Desktop", "test.wl"}];
  
  Export[path, "Print @ $EvaluationEnvironment", "Text"];
  
  Import["! math.exe -script " <> path , "Text"]
  

• "Scheduled"

   RunScheduledTask[Print@$EvaluationEnvironment, {2}]