envelope

envelope is a modern environment variables manager.

A modern environment variables manager

Usage: envelope [COMMAND]

Commands:
  add        Add environment variables to a specific environment
  check      Check which environment is currently exported
  delete     Delete environment variables
  drop       Drop environment
  duplicate  Create a copy of another environment
  diff       Diff two existing environments
  edit       Edit environment variables in editor
  history    Display the historical values of a specific key in a given environment
  init       Initialize envelope
  import     Import environment variables
  list       List saved environments and/or their variables
  revert     Revert environment variable
  help       Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Installation

Brew

You can install envelope from homebrew-core:

$ brew install envelope

Binary

You can download the envelope binary in the latest release and copy the binary to a folder in your $PATH

Cargo

You can install envelope with cargo, make sure that your ~/.cargo folder is in your $PATH

$ git clone https://github.com/mattrighetti/envelope
$ cd envelope
$ cargo install --path .
$ envelope --version
envelope 0.3.11

Building

envelope is written in Rust, so you'll need the Rust compiler.

To build envelope:

$ git clone https://github.com/mattrighetti/envelope
$ cd envelope
$ cargo build --release
$ ./target/release/envelope --version
envelope 0.3.11

How it works

envelope is a command line utility that leverages an SQLite database to keep track of your environment variables so you can easily switch between different configurations.

Usage

Pretty print

Pipe .env files to envelope to get a pretty format representation of the file

$ cat .env | envelope

+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| VARIABLE          | VALUE                                        |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| DATABASE_URL      | postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/mydb |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| SECRET_KEY        | mysecretkey123                               |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| API_KEY           | your_api_key_here                            |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| DEBUG_MODE        | true                                         |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| SMTP_HOST         | smtp.example.com                             |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID | your_access_key_id                           |
+-------------------+----------------------------------------------+

Import

Import from .env file

$ envelope import dev .env
$ envelope list dev
API_KEY=your_api_key_here
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_access_key_id
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/mydb
DEBUG_MODE=true
SECRET_KEY=mysecretkey123
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com

It's also possible to import directly from stdin

$ cat .env | envelope import prod

List

List environment variables of a particular environment.

$ envelope list dev
API_KEY=your_api_key
...
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com

You can also specify the sorting order of the output using the --sort option. The available sorting options are:

• key or k: Sort by key in ascending order.
• value or v: Sort by value in ascending order.
• date or d: Sort by creation date in ascending order.
• kd: Sort by key in descending order.
• vd: Sort by value in descending order.
• dd: Sort by creation date in descending order (default).

For example, to list the environment variables in descending order by their keys:

$ envelope list dev --sort kd
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
...
API_KEY=your_api_key

If no --sort option is provided, the default sorting is by creation date (da).

Add

Add env variables to an environment

$ envelope add local db_connection https://example.com
$ envelope list local
DB_CONNECTION=https://examples.com

You can use lowercased variables, they will be uppercased by envelope

Delete

Delete entire environments from envelope

$ envelope delete dev
$ envelope list dev

Envelope always soft deletes environment variables, they are never actually deleted, this is useful in case you want to take a look at the history of a certain valriable. You can however do a hard delete using the drop command

Drop

Drops (hard deletes) an environment

$ envelope drop dev
$ envelope list

Check

Checks which environment is currently active

$ export $(envelope list dev)
$ envelope check
dev

Diff

Diff two different environments

$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:3030
$ envelope add local dev true
$ envelope add prod db_connection https://proddb.com
$ envelope add prod db_user pg
$ envelope add prod db_pwd somepwd
$ envelope diff local prod
# DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:3030 -> https://proddb.com
- DB_PWD=somepwd
- DB_USER=pg
+ DEV=true

Revert

Revert a key value of an environment to a previous value

$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:3030
$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:2222
$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:3333
$ envelope list local
DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:3333
$ envelope revert local db_connection
$ envelope list local
DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:2222
$ envelope revert local db_connection
$ envelope list local
DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:3030

History

Shows all the values that a certain key in an environment was set to

$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:3030
$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:2222
$ envelope add local db_connection http://localhost:3333
$ envelope history local db_connection
2025-01-01 00:00:00 DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:3030
2025-02-01 00:00:00 DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:2222
2025-03-01 00:00:00 DB_CONNECTION=http://localhost:3333