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Add "--value-file" option to "sops set [...]" #1876

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Merged
felixfontein merged 1 commit into from
Jul 23, 2025
Merged

Add "--value-file" option to "sops set [...]" #1876

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17 changes: 16 additions & 1 deletion cmd/sops/main.go
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1385,6 +1385,10 @@ func main() {
Name: "output-type",
Usage: "currently json, yaml, dotenv and binary are supported. If not set, sops will use the input file's extension to determine the output format",
},
cli.BoolFlag{
Name: "value-file",
Usage: "treat 'value' as a file to read the actual value from (avoids leaking secrets in process listings)",
},
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@felixfontein felixfontein Jun 28, 2025

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How about adding a (mutually exclusive) further option that reads from stdin instead of a file? That would provide a platform independent way of reading from stdin (/dev/stdin doesn't work on Windows).

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@bjornfor bjornfor Jun 29, 2025

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Sure, but that would take some more time for me to implement and test (noob here). Also, isn't that something that can be added on top of this PR and is not in conflict/wrong direction with this change (iow, not a blocker)?

Another option could be to make the "value" argument optional, and if missing, read from stdin. (On Linux it's trivial to pipe file contents to stdin, I don't know about Windows.)

Thoughts?

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@felixfontein felixfontein Jul 5, 2025

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I personally think it's better to make things explicit, and let the user explicitly ask for reading from stdin, instead of implicitly just doing that and confusing users which forget the value argument and then wonder why the program is "hanging".

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@bjornfor bjornfor Jul 5, 2025

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Good point. So that makes the PR as-is go in the right direction.

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@bjornfor bjornfor Jul 10, 2025

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@felixfontein: I'm not sure if you're waiting for me to add --value-stdin flag, or someone else to review, but I started looking at adding --value-stdin just now. And the first issue is that it removes the need for the "value" positional argument. Which means the help text will be confusing/wrong.

How about using the special value - to mean "read from stdin"? Many CLI tools already use that. It can be documented in the --value-file option.

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@bjornfor bjornfor Jul 10, 2025

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I added "treat - as stdin", and rebased.

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@felixfontein felixfontein Jul 17, 2025

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Sorry for the late reply; I think having a dedicated option is better than using -. (We had a similar discussion in #739 (comment); after reading FiloSottile/age#494 I prefer a separate option. Magic can always lead to trouble, including security problems, and treating - different from other files would be some magic.)

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@bjornfor bjornfor Jul 18, 2025

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Ok. I removed treating '-' as stdin in the latest update. Not because I agree, but because I'd rather not have that block us from fixing the current secret leakage in process listings when using "sops set".

(I don't see how --value-stdin can fit into the existing "sop set [..]" interface, so that'll have to be implemented by someone else. The problem is how to have an interface with mandatory positional arguments where an optional flag removes the need for a preivously mandatory positional argument. I think it either becomes an ugly interface, which is difficult to document, or we need separate "sops set-from-stdin", which is just a different kind of ugly, IMHO.)

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@felixfontein felixfontein Jul 23, 2025

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Sounds fair.

cli.IntFlag{
Name: "shamir-secret-sharing-threshold",
Usage: "the number of master keys required to retrieve the data key with shamir",
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -1430,7 +1434,18 @@ func main() {
return common.NewExitError("Invalid set index format", codes.ErrorInvalidSetFormat)
}

value, err := jsonValueToTreeInsertableValue(c.Args()[2])
var data string
if c.Bool("value-file") {
filename := c.Args()[2]
content, err := os.ReadFile(filename)
if err != nil {
return toExitError(err)
}
data = string(content)
} else {
data = c.Args()[2]
}
value, err := jsonValueToTreeInsertableValue(data)
if err != nil {
return toExitError(err)
}
Expand Down
48 changes: 48 additions & 0 deletions functional-tests/src/lib.rs
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -490,6 +490,54 @@ bar: baz",
panic!("Output JSON does not have the expected structure");
}

#[test]
fn set_json_file_insert_with_value_file() {
let file_path = prepare_temp_file(
"test_set_json_file_insert_with_value_file.json",
r#"{"a": 2, "b": "ba"}"#.as_bytes(),
);
let value_file = prepare_temp_file("insert_value_file.json", r#"{"cc": "ccc"}"#.as_bytes());
assert!(
Command::new(SOPS_BINARY_PATH)
.arg("encrypt")
.arg("-i")
.arg(file_path.clone())
.output()
.expect("Error running sops")
.status
.success(),
"sops didn't exit successfully"
);
let output = Command::new(SOPS_BINARY_PATH)
.arg("set")
.arg("--value-file")
.arg(file_path.clone())
.arg(r#"["c"]"#)
.arg(value_file.clone())
.output()
.expect("Error running sops");
println!(
"stdout: {}, stderr: {}",
String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stdout),
String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stderr)
);
assert!(output.status.success(), "sops didn't exit successfully");
let mut s = String::new();
File::open(file_path)
.unwrap()
.read_to_string(&mut s)
.unwrap();
let data: Value = serde_json::from_str(&s).expect("Error parsing sops's JSON output");
if let Value::Mapping(data) = data {
let a = data.get(&Value::String("c".to_owned())).unwrap();
if let &Value::Mapping(ref a) = a {
assert_encrypted!(&a, Value::String("cc".to_owned()));
return;
}
}
panic!("Output JSON does not have the expected structure");
}

#[test]
fn set_yaml_file_update() {
let file_path = prepare_temp_file(
Expand Down
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