How to deploy a shared .env file

[viniciusbig]

I'm using a cakephp recipe.
Using cake, I have a config/.env file with my environment variables.
But this file is not suppose to be in git (and its not), so after cloning the repo, its not there.

Since its not there, deployer doesn't do anything even the file being listed in the recipe as sharedFile

How can I first deploy this file if it doesn't exist?

Am I missing something?

[antonmedv]

Can you provide an example?

[viniciusbig]

I can try!

I'm deployng a fresh CakePHP 4 install for the first time.

Cake uses 3 files for configs config/.env, config/app.php and config/app_local.php
(only config/app.php is on source control)

Cakephp recipe already says that config/.env and config/app.php in the shared_files

deployer/recipe/cakephp.php

Line 19 in 8b3d7f7

set('shared_files', [

But, since the file is not there, no symlink is created by deployer

---

I've just find a similar situation in Laravel
https://github.com/lorisleiva/laravel-deployer

and the text suggest that I need to run deployer the first time, create my files manually and them run it again to make this work

Is this the case?

[viniciusbig]

So, to give anyone else an answer here and close this question, a few thing I've found on this.

tl;dr

For Cake4 deploy

• Add config/app_local.php to your shared_files
• Before first deploy, manually creates the folders shared/config and put your config/app_local.php and your config/.env if you need it.

---

Deployer and Cake versions

• Deployer 7 is still beta right now.
• This means a fresh common install will get you Deployer 6.
• Deployer 6 have a CakePHP3 recipe, not CakePHP4 (be aware of that)

Config files

• On cake4, there is 3 different files to handle environment variables: config/.env, config/app.php, config/app_local.php
• config/.env, config/app_local.php should not be committed, each environment need a copy of them with the correct values.
• So, they are NOT in source code control.

So, talking about config/.env:

• this file is present in Cake4 Deployer recipe as a shared_file; (maybe not a good default to be there)
• the file is NOT THERE when Deployer clone it, and therefore, is NOT shared in the shared_folder.
• you should not being using this file, check details below.
• if you need it, you should add a new step, after deploy:update_code to create it (or copy from somewhere else)
• or you can copy into shared/config folder

task('deploy:env', function() {
    // add some code to create or copy your .env to the shared_folder
});
after('deploy:update_code', 'deploy:env');

About config/app_local.php:

• this is the file Cake4 uses to hold environment specific configs
• the file is NOT THERE when cloning the repo
• Cake's Install creates one after getting composer dependencies, but at this point Deployer already executed deploy:shared, so it's too late.
• So you will need to manually copy the file into shared/config folder
• And you will need to add config/app_local.php in your shared_files

set('shared_files', [
    'config/app_local.php',
]);

Conclusion

• You should manually create the shared folder, and put the config/app_local.php file there with the correct value
• So now you can deploy a cakephp correctly.

About .env files

.env files should not be used on production. They are not made for that.
Having this file in production is considered a SECURITY RISK and also decreases the boostrap performance of your application.