client-env

client-env provides the ability for a single machine to switch between different clients' environments and keep them isolated from one another on the same box. For example, client A may have a certain set of configuration (SSH keys, environment variables, scripts, etc.) that client B. This allows us to check in and share certain non-sensitive configuration between developers to ensure a consistent development environment.

A developer can switch between client environments using the client-env-set and client-env-clear shell functions. Thus environment variables ($PATH, etc.), symbolic links, client-specific scripts, etc. can be set and cleared, respectively, if needed by the client.

It also sets a symbolic link in $HOME named current-client-env.

A client environment may contain many sub-directories:

• bin directory for scripts and command line utilities
• conf directory for configuration
• data directory for sample data
• doc directory for documentation files
• notes directory containing meeting notes or other notes of interest
• src directory which contains prototype/one-off scripts

None of the above are strictly required. At this time, in fact, only the bin and conf directories are referenced, if either are present.

Setup

client-env assumes there is an environment variable named LOCAL_DEV_DIR that points to a directory under which all of your git repositories live. This allows tools like git-utils to traverse all of your git repositories to perform different bulk operations. If your clients' environment directories are in git, they live here too.

Under LOCAL_DEV_DIR there are top-level client directories and under each client you can add a specially-named directory named ${client}-env.

If ${client}-env/bin is present, it will be added to the PATH environment variable value.

If ${client}-env/conf is present and contains a script named client-env-set.sh, that script will be source-d into the current shell when client-env-set is called. If the script named client-env-clear.sh is present, that script will be source-d into the current shell when client-env-clear is called.

Once the directory structure is set up, source the .client-env-completion.bash snippet in your .bashrc file in order to expose the client-env-set and client-env-clear commands:

source $HOME/dev/mustardgrain/client-env/.client-env-completion.bash

Example Scripts

The following are example scripts for client-env-set.sh and client-env-clear.sh.

client-env-set.sh

__client-env-symlink-add bigcorp $HOME/.aws credentials

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
export AWS_SECRET_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
export AWS_KEYPAIR=$HOME/.ssh/default.pem

client-env-clear.sh

__client-env-symlink-rm bigcorp $HOME/.aws credentials

unset AWS_ACCESS_KEY
unset AWS_SECRET_KEY
unset AWS_KEYPAIR

Note that these are source-d into the current shell and thus the environment variables will be export-ed (set) and unset in the shell.