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Environment Configuration

Values in hubfile can be stored in the version control system such as git. However not all parameter should be available in the repository. For example, credentials should be stored in a secure place. Hubctl allows to store values in environment variables.

Environment configuration is a perfect example. Cloud credentials, Kubernetes, etc are the good examples

Passwords and other Secrets is another example of such parameters. Passwords should not be committed to the repository. Instead they should be passed in a separate way to the users. Don't store keys from the front door under the mat.

Configuration

Environment variables are not stored in the hubfile. Instead they are stored in the .env file. This file is a symlink to the .hub/<deployment-name>.env file. This way allows to switch between different deployments of a stack and use different environment variables.

  1. To initialize such configuration run
hubctl stack init

Or if current directory already have an initialized stack. This is extra protection from accidentally overwriting existing configuration.

hubctl stack init --help
  1. To configure environment variables run
hubctl stack configure

Or if you want to trigger only environment variables checks run the following command

hubctl stack configure -r "env"

Command above will check all parameters marked with fromEnv and will ask user to provide values for them. Hubctl will see if variable is not exist in .env file and prompt user. Hubctl will also provide convenience suggestion to the user based on the following algorithm

  1. If environment variable is defined, then use it
  2. If environment variable is not defined, then use default value
  3. If parameter has empty: allow then use empty value
  4. Use previously provided value from the same environment variable
  5. Use random value

You can change the value prompted by the hubctl.

Note: After value has been set, you can always change it in .env file.

How to Switch Between Configurations

Hubctl allows to switch between different configurations. For example, you can have different configurations for different environments.

hubctl stack ls # list all available stacks
hubctl stack use <stack-name> # use the stack for the current directory

Configure Programmatically

Hubctl extensions contains a .env parser written in bash. It has been available in ~/.hub/bin/dotenv and automatically added to the PATH during the hubctl stack <any> command. You can use it to parse or set environment variables from your deployment hooks

For more details check

~/.hub/bin/dotenv --help

Note: dotenv parser maybe in the different if you decided to install hubctl extensions in the different location

See Also

Last update: August 30, 2023