NAME sekrets.rb SYNOPSIS sekrets is a command line tool and library used to securely manage encrypted files and settings in your rails' applications and git repositories. INSTALL gem install sekrets gem 'sekrets' DESCRIPTION TL;DR # create an encrypted config file ruby -r yaml -e'puts({:api_key => 1234}.to_yaml)' | sekrets write config/settings.yml.enc --key 42 # create a new encrypted config file in your editor sekrets edit config/settings.yml.enc --key 42 # display it sekrets read config/settings.yml.enc --key 42 # edit it sekrets edit config/settings.yml.enc --key 42 # see that it's encrypted cat config/settings.yml.enc # commit it git add config/settings.yml.enc # put the decryption key in a file echo 42 > .sekrets.key # ignore this file in git echo .sekrets.key >> .gitignore # you now no longer need to provide the --key argument to commands sekrets read config/settings.yml.enc sekrets edit config/settings.yml.enc # make sure this file gets deployed on your server echo " require 'sekrets/capistrano' " >> Capfile # commit and deploy git add config/settings.yml.enc git commit -am'encrypted settings yo' git pull && git push && cap staging deploy # access these settings in your application code settings = Sekrets.settings_for('./config/settings.yml.enc') RAILS gem 'sekrets' # Gemfile bundle install rake sekrets:generate:key rake sekrets:generate:editor rake sekrets:generate:config DESCRIPTION sekrets provides commandline tools and a library to manage and access encrypted files in your code base. it allows one to check encrypted infomation into a repository and to manage it alongside the rest of the code base. it elimnates the need to check in unencrypted information, keys, or other sensitive infomation. sekrets provides both a general mechanism for managing arbitrary encrypted files and a specific mechanism for managing encrypted config files. KEY LOOKUP for *all* operations, from the command line or otherwise, sekrets uses the following algorithm to search for a decryption key: - any key passed directly as a parameter to a library call will be preferred - otherwise the code looks for a companion key file. for example, given the file 'config/sekrets.yml.enc' sekrets will look for a key at config/.sekrets.yml.enc.key if either of these is found to be non-empty the contents of the file will be used as the decryption key for that file. you should *never* commit these key files and also add them to your .gitignore - or similar. - next a project key file is looked for. the path of this file is ./.sekrets.key normally and, in a rails' application RAILS_ROOT/.sekrets.key - if that is not found sekrets looks for the key in the environment under the env var SEKRETS_KEY the env var used is configurable in the library - next the global key file is search for, the path of this file is ~/.sekrets.key - finally, if no key has yet been specified or found, the user is prompted to input the key. prompt only occurs if the user us attached to a tty. so, for example, no prompt will hang and application being started in the background such as a rails' application being managed by passenger. see Sekrets.key_for for more details KEY DISTRIBUTION sekrets does *not* attempt to solve the key distribution problem for you, with one exception: if you are using capistrano to do a 'vanilla' ssh based deploy a simple recipe is provided which will detect a local keyfile and scp it onto the remote server(s) on deploy. sekrets assumes that the local keyfile, if it exists, is correct. in plain english the capistrano recipe does: scp ./sekrets.key deploy@remote.host.com:/rails_root/current/sekrets.key it goes without saying that the local keyfile should *never* be checked in and also should be in .gitignore distribution of this key among developers is outside the scope of the library. encrypted email is likely the best mechanism for distribution, but you've still got to sovle this problem for yourself ;-/