awsprofile

TLDR

awsprofile allows for easy switching between your multiple AWS profiles, along with granular management of the config and credentials files.

You May Like This If

• You don't like having a single ~/.aws/credentials file that contains all your profiles.
• You don't like having to use the awscli --profile parameter in your commands.

Tell Me More

Want to use your personal keys and config as your default AWS profile?

❯ awsprofile set personal

Changed your mind and want to switch to your work profile?

❯ awsprofile set work

Forgot what profile you're using and want to check before you run an awscli command?

❯ awsprofile current

Want to see what profiles you can switch to?

❯ awsprofile list

Key features

• Switch from using a single credential and config file, to having unique files for each of your profiles
• Utilizes native OS commands, ensuring it works out of the box on:
  • macOS
  • Linux
  • FreeBSD
  • WSL (bash on Windows)
• Full POSIX compatibility
• Autocomplete for bash, zsh, and fish
• Lightweight - Will not slow down your terminal
• Simple - It is a symlink manager that you opperate via CLI
• 100% open source - You can look at the code and see what's going on

Installation Instructions

macOS via Homebrew

brew install kris-anderson/tap/awsprofile

Manual (should work on macOS, linux, BSD, and WSL)

1. Create a ~/.local/bin/ directory if you don't already have one. This location is my personal preference, since I don't want my custom commands in system locations like /usr/bin. If you prefer to store it somewhere else, you don't need to create this directory.

   mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin/"

2. Download and extract the latest release to the above folder location, or modify the command below to your location of choice.

   wget -O- https://github.com/kris-anderson/awsprofile/releases/latest/download/awsprofile.tar.gz | tar -xz -C "$HOME/.local/bin/" awsprofile

3. If you use bash, you can edit ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile. If you use zsh, you can edit ~/.zshrc. Impliment either of the following methods:

   Method 1: Source the file wherever you saved it.

   source /path/to/awsprofile

   Method 2: Make sure ~/.local/bin/ is part of your environment path.

   export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Initial Configuration

You need to change the structure of your ~/.aws/ folder contents. Currently, you should have two files in that folder:

config
credentials

Copy the profile data from each of those files, and combine the content of both to create a single config.* file for each of your profiles. For example:

config.personal
config.work
config.whatever

Make sure the first line in each of the above files begins with:

[default]

The content of each of those config files should look similar to this:

[default]
aws_access_key_id=AK##################
aws_secret_access_key=8t######################################
region=us-west-1
output=json

Note: You can also separate the credentials from your config files if you prefer. Keep [default] as the first line in each credential file. If you choose to do this, your ~/.aws/ directory may look like:

config.personal
config.work
config.whatever
credentials.personal
credentials.work
credentials.whatever

Once you do this, your aws command will no longer work, since it's looking for the ~/.aws/config and optionally ~/.aws/credentials files that no longer exist. But that's where this utility comes in.

awsprofile allows for easy symlinking of these new files back to the original /.aws/config and optionally ~/.aws/credentials files that the aws CLI utility is looking for.

How it Works

After we run awsprofile set personal this is what your ~/.aws/ directory will look like:

config -> /Users/myname/.aws/config.personal
config.personal
config.work
config.whatever

Note that there's now a config file in that folder, and it is symlinked to your config.personal file.

Run awsprofile set work and your directory now looks like this:

config -> /Users/myname/.aws/config.work
config.personal
config.work
config.whatever