envdiff

A tiny CLI that compares your .env against an .env.example template and tells you exactly which keys are missing, which are empty, and which are extra.

Useful when:

• onboarding to a new project and you have no idea what variables it actually needs
• pulling a branch that introduced new config and silently broke your local app
• writing a CI check that fails if the deployed .env drifts from the checked-in template

Install

npm install -g envdiff

Or run it once without installing:

npx envdiff

Usage

envdiff                              # compares .env against .env.example
envdiff .env.local .env.example      # explicit paths
envdiff --help

Exit codes:

• 0 — all expected keys present
• 1 — keys are missing
• 2 — a file does not exist

Example

$ envdiff
actual:   /Users/me/app/.env
expected: /Users/me/app/.env.example

missing (2):
  - DATABASE_URL
  - REDIS_URL

empty (1):
  - SECRET_KEY

extra (1):
  + OLD_LEGACY_FLAG

Development

npm install
npm run dev          # run from source against the cwd
npm run build        # compile to dist/
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit

License

MIT