RunEnv/ Guides

How to

How to compare staging and production env vars

Before promoting a change, compare the keys that differ between staging and production. RunEnv can show that diff in the dashboard. The CLI comparison that stays off plaintext values is `runenv diff --keys-only`.

How it works

Three steps for the supported path.

  1. 01

    Select source and target

    In the dashboard, compare staging with production (or the pair your team actually promotes). Keep each environment’s access boundary in place.

  2. 02

    Review the key diff

    Filter to added, changed, and removed keys. For a local check that does not print values, run `runenv diff --keys-only`.

  3. 03

    Promote or restore

    Apply an approved change set, or restore an available version. Capture the surrounding audit history instead of rewriting a file.

Dashboard compare

Open the project, choose a source environment and a target environment, and review keys that are new, changed, removed, or already aligned. Filter to the differences that need attention before promotion.

CLI compare without dumping values

`runenv diff --keys-only` compares local keys with the configured environment. Other CLI file workflows can read or write local environment files; use them only when that storage boundary is intended.

Promote or restore deliberately

Promotion should follow the review path the environment requires. If a bad value is already live, restore an available previous version from Secret History so the rollback is a new version, not a deleted row.