This is causing breaks in 5.2.27. To reproduce, grab a fresh laravel install.

nano .env

Change DB_CONNECTION to sqlite in .env only. Save file.

touch database/database.sqlite (the database_path('database.sqlite') set in database/config.php before this change)
php artisan make:auth
php artisan migrate

  [InvalidArgumentException]            
  Database (homestead) does not exist.  

Because it's looking for homestead.

Change DB_DATABASE to this:
DB_DATABASE=/database/database.sqlite

and we still receive an error

  [InvalidArgumentException]                            
  Database (/database/database.sqlite) does not exist.                                                     

Additionally, even if I put a full path in and it works - do we really want a path as a DB_DATABASE? Could that not be abstracted to a DB_PATH environment variable which is only then used by the SQLite Driver?

@jamesfairhurst This change makes it actually easier to do the local testing in sqlite. You only need the two settings above to your phpunit.xml and use the DatabaseMigrations trait in your tests. No manual migrations necessary.