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That doesn't always work. There are migration scenarios where you have to use the correct domain to be able to test everything properly.

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I'm not convinced that's the same situation or if what you're describing is necessary in the majority of cases. Using the "correct" domain shouldn't be the norm - it should be an exceptional circumstance. As demonstrated in the above comment, it's easy to accidentally hit the production environment at which point you may be convinced that everything is alright and ship a broken change to production.

In theory I agree with your stance.

OTOH, in the real world, almost all websites that I've got to migrate are somewhat hardcoded for one domain (I've got this side project were I do websites hosting, good recurring money, little work).

Going for /etc/hosts is the only pragmatic choice here.

Yeah, you're right, I'm all for pragmatism when it's just a small site not in active development. I just didn't want people getting the idea that this is a good practice. It's a hack, and a dangerous one at that, but hacks can be okay depending on the circumstance.

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