Do we have an evolved way to set Meteor.settings ourselves ( like the @jkatzen solution, but factoring in the @serkandurusoy caveat above ) since 2015?
Handing variables between environments and obeying external control seems like a big hoop to jump through to give up major freedom, not to be able to manually set a configuration object, and have the values persist wherever else imported.
Especially using docker ( specifically implementing meteor-base ) this issue has burned a lot of time and removes confidence in the values propagating properly across environments.
[ The workaround there trailed off in 2020, but seems to draw attention to underlying issue of not being able to set Meteor.settings object from within code without environment variables: Add `--settings` Support to Package` · Issue #166 · disney/meteor-base · GitHub ]
As we near the 10-year anniversary of this topic ( and the link referenced in original post is no longer online ) I thought I’d ask 
[ Key desire/requirement: Ability to pull/set Meteor.settings configuration from within code without using environment variables at all. Would treat current behavior as default unless already defined or similar. ]