Is it possible to lock the design configuration in env.php?

Question

In production, the meta robots on my website is configured to be "INDEX,FOLLOW".

In staging, I run an sql query to insert or update it in the core_config_data table to be "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW".

However, when I try to set it and lock it in the env.php file, Magento tell me that's not possible :

xxx@yyy[19/08/20 15:42:42]:~/xxx/$ php bin/magento config:set --lock-env design/search_engine_robots/default_robots "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW"
The "design/search_engine_robots/default_robots" path doesn't exist. Verify and try again.

And magento is right : the config design/search_engine_robots/default_robots does not exists in a system.xml file but in vendor/magento/module-theme/view/adminhtml/ui_component/design_config_form.xml

Is there any way to lock the magento design configuration values in the env.php file ?

In my opinion, it would be very convenient to set it in the file as the value is stored in core_config_data, like all the other configurations.

Answer 1

I think this happens because the path you are using does not actually exist in a system.xml file. Even if it's saved in the core_config_data table as the rest of the config values, it is managed from the design management section. this section is not generated by system.xml files, but by the design_config_form.xml ui component.
the method that validates if the config path is ok Magento\Config\Model\Config\PathValidator::validate checks only what's generated by the system.xml files.

A quick and dirty solution would be to write a plugin for the method mentioned above and make it return true if the path matches your desired path.