env-diff

Compare two .env files and see what changed — ignoring order and comments.

Install

# From source
pip install -e .

# Or run directly
python3 env-diff file1.env file2.env

Usage

# Basic comparison
env-diff .env.example .env

# Disable colors (for piping)
env-diff .env.example .env --no-color

# Quiet mode (exit code only, for CI/CD)
env-diff .env.example .env --quiet
echo $?   # 0 = identical, 1 = differences found

Output

• Red -: Keys only in file1 (removed)
• Green +: Keys only in file2 (added)
• Yellow ~: Keys in both files with different values (changed)

Example:

- REDIS_URL  (only in .env.example)
+ DEBUG  (only in .env)
~ DATABASE_URL: postgres://prod/db -> postgres://localhost/db

1 removed, 1 added, 1 changed total

Features

• Compares by key name, ignores line order
• Skips # comments and blank lines
• Handles export KEY=VALUE prefix
• Strips surrounding quotes from values
• Color-coded output (disable with --no-color)
• Exit code 0/1 for CI/CD pipelines
• Zero dependencies — pure Python 3.11+ stdlib

Running tests

PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m unittest tests.test_env_diff -v

License

MIT