envassert

Ensure that the environment variables match what is requested, or abort.

SYNOPSIS

envassert [options]

Options: --help --man --break-at-error --env-description

CLI interface without dependencies

The envassert command is also available as self contained executable. You can download it and run it as it is without additional installation of CPAN packages. Of course, you still need Perl, but Perl comes with any normal Linux installation.

This can be convenient if you want to, for instance, include envassert in a docker container build.

curl -LSs -o envassert https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mikkoi/env-assert/master/script/envassert.packed
chmod +x ./envassert

OPTIONS

--help

Print a brief help message and exits.

--man

Prints the manual page and exits.

-b, --break-at-first-error

Break checking at the first error and report back. Default: false

-e, --env-description

Path to file which has the environment description. Default: .envdesc

DESCRIPTION

envassert checks that your runtime environment, as defined with environment variables, matches with what you want.

You can define your required environment in a file. Default file is .envassert but you can use any file. It is advantageous to use envassert for examnple when running a container. If you check your environment for missing or wrongly defined environment variables at the beginning of the container run, your container will fail sooner instead of in a later point in execution when the variables are needed.

Environment Description Language

Environment is described in file .envdesc. Environment description file is a Unix shell compatible file, similar to a .env file.

.envdesc Format

In .envdesc file there is only environment variables, comments or empty rows. Example:

# Required env
## envassert (opts: exact=1)
FILENAME=^[[:word:]]{1,}$'

Env var name is followed by a regular expression. The regexp is an extended Perl regular expression without quotation marks. One env var and its descriptive regexp use one row.

A comment begins at the beginning of the row and uses the whole row. It start with '#' character.

Two comment characters and the word envassert at the beginning of the row mean this is an envassert meta command. You can specify different environment related options with these commands.

Supported options:

exact

The option exact means that all allowed env variables are described in this file. Any unknown env var causes an error when verifying.