Places-env, secure version control of environment files
Now that I have your attention (“Don’t you dare version control environment files!!”, “This can’t be safe.”) and before you tear me and my project to shreds, please allow me to take a moment to celebrate something small but meaningful: I’ve finally released a thing. Thank you. Motivation tl;dr: The existing tools and libraries for versioning and syncing environment files / secrets across team members and CI machines just didn’t cut it for me. So, I set out to create my own solution — one finally checks all my boxes. So what is places-env? (I encourage you to check the readme…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Now that I have your attention (“Don’t you dare version control environment files!!”, “This can’t be safe.”) and before you tear me and my project to shreds, please allow me to take a moment to celebrate something small but meaningful: I’ve finally released a thing. Thank you. Motivation tl;dr: The existing tools and libraries for versioning and syncing environment files / secrets across team members and CI machines just didn’t cut it for me. So, I set out to create my own solution — one finally checks all my boxes. So what is places-env? (I encourage you to check the readme https://github.com/marckrenn/places-env/tree/develop?tab=rea... over on GitHub – it will all make a lot more sense with the corresponding schematic.) - places-env is a self-contained, completely free open-source (FOSS) alternative to HashiCorp Vault, Infisical, dotenv-vault and sops. - Leverages a single source of truth (SSOT) places.yaml for deriving multiple environment files. - Similar to sops, places-env encrypts only the values in places.yaml, resulting in places.enc.yaml, which can be securely checked into git: - Congrats, your SSOT is now version-controlled - Always synchronized with collaborators - Fully in-sync with the rest of your code, branches and tags (try doing that with Infisical & co.) - Changes remain 'human-trackable' — even when values are encrypted - Contrary to sops, encryption keys can be assigned either per environment or on a per-value basis - Provides a straightforward setup with no dependency on external services or libraries. - places watch start (persistently) tracks changes in places.yaml / places.enc.yaml and automatically handles encryption, decryption, keeps .gitignore up-to-date, and auto-updates environment files. So it's essentially set and forget. If you’re intrigued, please also check out the readme’s FAQ section https://github.com/marckrenn/places-env/tree/develop?tab=rea.... Feedback, criticism, etc. is, of course, very welcome.
Does the same job
all alternatives →- IJI just fixed .env once and for all – better-envNov 2025 · better-env.dev · ▲8
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