Target CLI

A CLI tool to manage context profiles for HashiCorp products. This allows you to save connection and configuration details, which would otherwise be set using Environment Variables into context profiles and gives the ability to switch between different profiles as required and set default context profiles.

Installation

Mac / Linux via Brew

brew tap devops-rob/tap && \
  brew install target

Linux Quick Install

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devops-rob/target-cli/main/install.sh | bash

Releases

Binaries can be downloaded for the releases page.

https://github.com/devops-rob/target-cli/releases

Example use case

There are two vault clusters, one for Dev (http://dev-vault:8200) and one for Prod (https://prod-vault:8200).

Running Vault CLI commands locally will by default attempt to connect to https://localhost:8200. To connect to another cluster, you need to know and remember the connection details and set a Vault environment variable. When you want to switch to a different cluster, you again need to set the environment variable. Target allows you to save multiple connection details into context profiles and easily switch between them as you require.

What Is a Context Profile?

A context profile is a grouping of configuration parameters required to perform an action against one of the supported HashiCorp Tools. A vault example is a context profile made of an endpoint pointing to https://prod-vault:8200, a namespace pointing to admin/target, and a token pointing to s.12345790asdfghjklpoi. This would render the following commands export VAULT_ADDR=https://prod-vault:8200; export VAULT_NAMESPACE=admin/target; export VAULT_TOKEN=s.12345790asdfghjklpoi. This can then be used with the eval command to set these environment variables in the current shell session.

Example usage

eval $(target vault select prod)

Current Supported Tools

Terraform
Vault
Boundary
Consul
Nomad

Configuring Target CLI For Your Shell

Target CLI allows engineers to set default context profiles that are automatically loaded into your shell session via Environment Variables. In order for this to work, you must configure your shell's start up scripts to load in Target CLI defaults.

For example, to configure Target CLI for zsh, we need to point the CLI at our zshrc file. For most users, this will be located at ~/.zshrc.

To configure Target CLI for this shell type, run the following command

target configure --path "~/.zshrc"

This will write a small helper script to the file that will come into effect when a new shell session is loaded.

Terraform

This is designed to store sets of terraform variables into profiles to allow for easy switching.

Example Use case

Let's say there are three environments, dev, test, and prod. Each environment is deployed and configured with Terraform. Configuration parameters are set using Terraform variables; however, each environment should be configured with its own naming convention.

dev has resource names prefixed with dev-
test has resource names prefixed with test-
prod has resource names prefixed with prod-

To configure a set of variables for each environment, we can set up a dev context profile where the variable values are set accordingly, and do the same for test and prod context profiles. This means to deploy to a specific environment, an operator can switch context before applying their terraform code.

Create Example

target terraform create dev \
  --var "aws_region=eu-west1" \
  --var "vpc_name=dev-vpc" \
  --var "ec2_instance_name=dev-droid-vm"

This will create a context profile named dev with 3 terraform variables, aws_region, vpc_name, and ec2_instance_name

Update Example

target terraform update example \
  --var "aws_region=eu-west2" \
  --var "vpc_name=dev" \
  --var "ec2_instance_name=dev-starship-vm"

This will update the values of the dev context profile created in the previous step

Delete Example

target terraform delete dev

This will delete the context profile named dev

Vault, Consul, Nomad and Boundary

Each of these tool sub commands work in the same way using the available flags for each tool specific argument. Below are some examples using Vault

Create Example

target vault create staging \
  --endpoint "https://staging-vault.target:8200" \
  --cacert "your CA cert" \
  --cert "your cert" \
  --key "your key" \
  --skip-verify true \
  --cli-no-colour true \
  --client-timeout "60s" \
  --format "json"

Update Example

target vault create staging \
  --endpoint "https://staging-vault.com:8200" \
  --cacert "your new CA cert" \
  --cert "your cert" \
  --key "your key" \
  --skip-verify true \
  --format "json"

Delete Example

target vault delete staging

List Example

target vault list

Setting Default Context Profiles

Setting the default or changing the default context profile for a tool can be done with the set-default sub command.

target vault set-default staging

Once a default has been set, a new shell will need to be launch in order for the changes to take effect. All new shell session swill spawn with your defaults as set.

Switching Context profiles

This can be done using the select sub command:

target vault select dev

This will print all export commands for the selected context profile.

In order for this to take effect in the current shell session, the above command will need to be wrapped in an eval command:

eval $(target vault select dev)

picatz / target-cli