envik

A compact CLI for managing multiple .env environments per project.

The name comes from "env" + the Polish diminutive suffix "-ik" — something small and self-contained.

Status

• [done] envik init — scans the project root for .env files, moves them into .envik/, creates default.env if none found
• [done] envik list — lists available environments in .envik/
• [done] envik use <name> — copies .envik/<name>.env to the active .env
• [done] envik current — shows which environment is currently active
• [wip] Global config and database paths — config (config.json) and the tracking database (envik.db) are currently written to CWD; the intent is to store them in OS-appropriate paths via the directories crate so state is truly global across projects
• [planned] Backup with timestamps
• [planned] Env file encryption
• [planned] Sharing environments across team members
• [planned] CI/CD integration for fetching environments remotely

Why

Managing multiple .env files (dev, staging, prod) usually means manually renaming files or maintaining ad-hoc scripts. envik handles this with a single use command that copies the right environment into place, while tracking which one is active per project.

I built this to learn Rust and solve a problem I kept running into in my own projects. It is not trying to replace direnv or dotenv-vault — it is a focused, local-first tool that does one thing.

Tech stack

• Rust 2024 — single self-contained binary, no runtime dependency
• clap (derive) — CLI argument parsing
• redb — embedded key-value store; no SQL, tracks active environment per project path
• serde + serde_json — config serialization to human-readable JSON
• anyhow — error handling
• colored — terminal color output

Quick start

Not published to crates.io yet. Build from source:

git clone <repo>
cd envik-cli
cargo build --release

Basic usage in a project:

# initialize envik — discovers and organizes .env files
envik init

# list available environments
envik list

# switch to an environment
envik use dev

# check which environment is currently active
envik current

Architecture

your-project/
  .envik/
    dev.env         # stored environment
    prod.env
    config.json     # optional, project-local config overrides
  .env              # active file, written by 'envik use'

envik use copies the content of .envik/<name>.env to .env and records the active environment in a redb database keyed by project path.

Config is two-layered: global defaults merged with optional per-project overrides from .envik/config.json. Local values take precedence.

Key decisions

• redb over SQLite — no external dependency; the use case is a single key-value lookup (project path → active env name), not relational data
• File copy, not symlink — use writes content directly to .env so the result is transparent to tools that read .env without following symlinks