This is a Vagrant plugin to load environment variables from env.bash. Putting settings in env.bash provides a single source of development configuration for Vagrant (e.g. AWS secrets that shouldn't be committed to source control) and the application under development. This is especially important for web apps that adhere to the twelve-factor methodology.

This plugin was inspired by vagrant-env with the primary difference that env.bash is a proper Bash script that will be executed by /bin/bash, so it can contain conditionals, multi-line strings, etc. This also makes it easier to source into the shell in the Vagrant guest as application configuration.

This plugin also adds a command vagrant env to inspect how env.bash modifies the environment.

Install using Vagrant's plugin system:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-envbash

With the plugin installed, Vagrant will look for env.bash in the same directory as Vagrantfile. If found, Vagrant will execute the file as a Bash script. Any environment variables that are exported in the file will be updated in ENV. Additionally any variables that are unset will be removed from ENV.

The plugin runs very early in the Vagrant execution, so ENV is fully updated before executing configuration in Vagrantfile. This means that env.bash is the ideal place to put development configuration such as AWS secrets for vagrant-aws that shouldn't be committed to source control in Vagrantfile.

With this Vagrantfile:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.provider :aws do |aws, override|
    override.vm.box = "dummy"
    aws.access_key_id = ENV['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']
    aws.secret_access_key = ENV['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']
    aws.keypair_name = ENV['AWS_KEYPAIR_NAME']
    aws.ami = ENV.fetch('AWS_AMI', "ami-7747d01e")
  end
end

then the secrets can be put into env.bash:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=xxxxxxxxxxxx
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
export AWS_KEYPAIR_NAME=email@example.com

Additionally if the Vagrantfile has multiple provider configuration stanzas to enable a large developer organization, then the developer can choose their preferred provider on a per-project basis by setting VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER in env.bash:

export VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER=aws

With this initial environment configuration:

$ export W=unmodified
$ export X=unmodified
$ # Y is not set
$ export Z=unmodified

And this env.bash:

export W=unmodified
export X=modified
export Y=added
unset Z  # remove from ENV

Then we can run vagrant env to see what happens:

$ vagrant env
CHANGED the following variables:
    X="modified" (was: "unmodified")
ADDED the following variables:
    Y="added"
REMOVED the following variables:
    Z="unmodified"

No, definitely not. The purpose of env.bash is to store development configuration that isn't suitable for committing to the repository, whether that's secret keys or developer-specific customizations. In fact, you should add the following line to .gitignore:

/env.bash

Yes. If you have a lot of settings and want to avoid repeating export, you can put set -a at the top of your env.bash to automatically export all variables. In that case, you should also set +a at the bottom to avoid confusion if you source env.bash into your guest shell configuration.

You can put newlines directly into a multi-line string in Bash, so for example this works:

export PRIVATE_KEY="
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----"

Yes, anything you unset will be removed from ENV. See the example of vagrant env above.

Assuming that your source directory is available on the default /vagrant mount point in the guest, you can simply add a line at the bottom of /home/vagrant/.bash_profile:

source /vagrant/env.bash

Note that this means that settings are loaded on vagrant ssh so you need to exit the shell and rerun vagrant ssh to refresh if you change settings.