Low Profile

Simple profile management for AWS.

Install

Installation is super simple, we are using Brew.

$ brew update
$ brew install lowprofile

After the brew install finishes you will be advised to update your zshrc or bash_profile with the following:

  . $(brew --repository)/etc/lowprofile

which for example can done without editing the .zshrc file with the following:

echo ". $(brew --repository)/etc/lowprofile" >> ~/.zshrc

or .bash_profile:

echo ". $(brew --repository)/etc/lowprofile" >> ~/.bash_profile

you can also add the AWS_PROFILE variable to your environment file if it isn't there already (lowprofile will do this automatically the first time you activate a profile).

echo "export AWS_PROFILE=default" >> ~/.zshrc

As always you can use the AWS cli to add or update profiles.

$ aws configure --profile different-profile

AWS Access Key ID [None]: lettersandnumbers
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: morelettersandnumbers
Default region name [None]: us-west-2
Default output format [None]: json

Usage

Now that Low Profile is installed and you have a default AWS profile congfigured, you can now describe-profiles, activate-profile, describe-active-profile and deactivate-profile the currently active profile.

$ lowprofile describe-profiles
default
different-profile

$ lowprofile describe-active-profile

$ lowprofile activate-profile --profile default
activating profile default

$ lowprofile describe-active-profile
current profile is default

$ lowprofile activate-profile --profile different-profile
activating profile different-profile

$ lowprofile describe-active-profile
current profile is different-profile

$ lowprofile deactivate-profile
deactiving profile different-profile

$ lowprofile describe-active-profile
there is currently no active profile

What's going on?

Interaction with the AWS APIs can be done by calling them directly, through a library or from the command line. The libraries and command line support use of several environment variables for auth'ing with AWS (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN and AWS_PROFILE). Low Profile uses the AWS_PROFILE variable for activating profiles inside the ~/.aws/crendentials file. You can still use the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN variables to override what's in the credentials file. Low Profile uses your shell's login init file, currently ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc. After a lowprofile command is run your shell session will be refreshed to pick change to the AWS_PROFILE variable.