Building a safer way to manage .env in Laravel — and I’ve just released the public roadmap

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Hi everyone 👋

A few days ago I shared a tool I’ve been building for Laravel to make working with .env files safer and less stressful. Over the past weeks I realized how easy it is to break an application by:

• missing an environment variable
• overwriting the wrong .env
• changing something in production too quickly

So I decided to build a small tool whose only job is to make .env management more safe, predictable and reversible — without turning Laravel into something it’s not.

I’ve now published a public product roadmap so that everything is clear and transparent:

👉

What the tool currently does

Right now Config Manager allows you to:

• ✅ export environment configuration
• ✅ validate required variables before export
• ✅ generate a .env.config-manager file
• ✅ optionally apply it using --apply
• ✅ automatically back up the previous .env
• ✅ rollback safely when needed
• ✅ show clear warnings when dealing with production

Instead of editing .env manually and hoping for the best, the workflow becomes much more controlled and calm.

What’s coming next (Pro Edition)

In the roadmap I describe the next major goals, including:

• 🔹 local audit logs (no SaaS, no external services)
• 🔹 the ability to choose which backup to restore
• 🔹 a simple terminal CLI so nobody needs Tinker
• 🔹 better onboarding and safety UX

All development will stay focused on:

• ✅ safety
• ✅ reversibility
• ✅ predictability
• ✅ keeping things local

Long‑term vision

Eventually there will be a Security / Enterprise Edition with features such as:

• 🔸 declarative environment rules
• 🔸 dry‑run mode with human‑readable output
• 🔸 structured audit logging
• 🔸 CI/CD validation support
• 🔸 diff between environment versions

The core philosophy will never change:

• 🚫 no remote config storage
• 🚫 no silent updates
• 🚫 no hidden magic

If you want to have a look

GitHub (details, docs, roadmap):

👉

AMA — happy to chat 🙂

If you’re curious about:

• why I built it
• how it works internally
• real problems it solved for me
• what you would improve
• whether this is useful in your workflow

…feel free to ask anything. I’m not trying to spam — I genuinely enjoy talking about safe configuration practices in Laravel and learning from how others do it.

Thanks for reading 🙏