Working with Configuration Files

The Config/Boot options happen early enough it's possible that you could do that, though I've never tried something like that honestly. If you're concerned about it being fragile, you can always use other ways to set environment variables on your server, like through bash profiles, etc, and not use the .env file itself. Though, personally, I'd find ways to avoid using FTP for deployment, if possible.

Wouldn't it be simpler to support several .env files?

production.env
development.env
etc.

It would be great!