Zerkenv is a simple CLI tool for managing environment variables.

• Built around the idea of sets of environment variables, called modules.
• Modules can depend on other modules, allowing one to set up environments.
• Modules can be shared — these are stored in S3 and cached in local files.
• Modules can be private — these are only stored in local files.
• Local module files are encrypted at all times — at rest and in flight.

First, make sure you have the following tools installed and configured:

• aws — protip: you can use zerkenv to manage AWS credentials!
• gpg — you'll probably want to make sure gpg-agent is configured correctly, too.

If you're using Mac OS X, there may be some additional setup to do -- see Troubleshooting - OS X below.

Then, download the zerkenv script to a directory in your PATH.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adzerk-oss/zerkenv/master/zerkenv > ~/bin/zerkenv
chmod 755 ~/bin/zerkenv

Finally, to configure zerkenv for your shell do the following (or skip to the section for your shell below):

• Set the ZERKENV_BUCKET environment variable to your S3 bucket.
• Optionally set the ZERKENV_DIR environment variable to your local cache dir.
• Configure your shell to evaluate the output of zerkenv -i <shell> on startup.

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc file:

export ZERKENV_BUCKET=my-zerkenv-modules  # set this to your s3 bucket name
export ZERKENV_DIR=$HOME/.config/zerkenv  # optional: default is ~/.zerkenv
. <(zerkenv -i bash)

Zerkenv works with Fish shell provided that you have bass installed. This is necessary in order to source Bash scripts that set environment variables in the Bash subprocess, and have those changes reflected in the Fish shell.

After installing bass, add the following to your ~/.config/fish/config.fish file:

set -gx ZERKENV_BUCKET my-zerkenv-modules  # set this to your s3 bucket name
set -gx ZERKENV_DIR $HOME/.config/zerkenv  # optional: default is ~/.zerkenv
. (zerkenv -i fish | psub)

When correctly installed, you will have two new commands:

• The zerkenv command is used to list, create, update, and delete modules.
• The zerkload function is used to load modules into the current shell.

Both of these will include tab-completion in your shell, and you can see the usage info for either with the -h option.

# show usage info
zerkenv -h

# show usage info
zerkload -h

The first thing you can do is safely store your AWS credentials in a local encrypted file for use with zerkenv. To do this you will create a local module that is private, named @aws-creds:

# Create or replace the local '@aws-creds' module with content from stdin.
# NOTE: Modules whose names start with '@' are PRIVATE modules -- zerkenv
#       will refuse to up/download private modules to/from S3.
cat <<EOT |zerkenv -w @aws-creds
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
EOT

Now you can list the available modules in the local cache:

# Print the names or avilable local modules, one per line.
zerkenv -l

And you can print the module contents:

# Print the contents of the '@aws-creds' module on stdout.
zerkenv @aws-creds

You can load the module into your shell:

# Load the '@aws-creds' module into a new subshell.
zerkload -n @aws-creds

# Load the '@aws-creds' module into the current shell environment.
zerkload @aws-creds

You will now see @aws-creds when you list the currently loaded modules:

# Print a list of modules loaded into the current shell, one per line.
zerkenv

Now let's create a shared module. First create it locally, as above, but choose a name that does not begin with @:

cat <<EOT |zerkenv -w wifi
export WIFI_SSID=guest
export WIFI_PASS=guest
EOT

Then, you can upload the module from the local cache to S3:

# Upload the 'wifi' module to S3.
zerkenv -W wifi

Now you will see it when you list the available modules in S3:

# List modules available in S3.
zerkenv -r

If others have made changes and uploaded them you can update the local cache from S3:

# Update modules in local cache from S3.
zerkenv -u

Finally, you can delete the module from the local cache:

# Delete the 'wifi' module from the local cache.
zerkenv -x wifi

and from S3:

# Delete the 'wifi' module from S3.
zerkenv -X wifi

Modules are snippets of bash to be evaluated in the current shell context by the zerkload function. A module normally exists to export environment variables, but you can have pretty much any valid bash statements in there.

For example, a typical module:

export WIFI_SSID=guest
export WIFI_PASS=guest

Note that modules are bash snippets, so they may contain references, etc:

export WIFI_SSID=guest
export WIFI_PASS=guest
export OTHER_WIFI_SSID=$WIFI_SSID
export OTHER_WIFI_PASS=$WIFI_PASS

Modules may declare dependencies on other modules by setting a special variable named ZERKENV_DEPENDENCIES. When zerkenv loads module that declares dependencies into a shell it will also load the dependencies (in dependency order).

For example:

ZERKENV_DEPENDENCIES="foo bar baz"
export WIFI_SSID=guest
export WIFI_PASS=guest

Modules may contain references to variables defined in dependencies, too:

ZERKENV_DEPENDENCIES="foo bar"
export BAZ_USER=${FOO_USER:-foop} # use FOO_USER if set, otherwise 'foop'
export BAZ_PASS=${FOO_PASS:-barp} # use FOO_PASS if set, otherwise 'barp'

Note: Dependency order is meaningless when the dependency graph has cycles. In this case a warning is printed to stderr showing the cyclic dependencies and the order is chosen arbitrarily.

Modules may contain arbitrary bash statements. However, the module will be evaluated twice — first in a subshell to resolve dependencies, then again in the current shell.

You may wrap non-idempotent actions in a guard to prevent them from being evaluated during dependency resolution:

export FOO=bar
# This prevents 'ssh-add' from being evaluated in the subshell:
if [ -z "$ZERKENV_RESOLVING_DEPENDENCIES" ]; then
  ssh-add ~/.ssh/foo.pem
fi

Zerkenv relies on the envsubst program from the gettext package, which is not installed by default on some versions of OS X. If you do not have envsubst available, see this StackOverflow question about installing the gettext package on OS X. There is a package available via Homebrew.

You might run into issues where gpg-agent cannot ask for your GPG passphrase out of the box because it is not configured to know how to do that. It needs a GUI program like pinentry (which is not installed by default on some versions of OS X) to ask you for your passphrase.

You may find this guide to setting up gpg, gpg-agent, and pinentry-mac useful if you are experiencing problems.

Copyright © 2017-2018 Adzerk

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License version 1.0.