A PowerShell script to efficiently manage AWS CLI credentials and config files across multiple projects.

When working with multiple AWS projects, managing the AWS CLI configuration files (~/.aws/credentials and ~/.aws/config) can become cumbersome:

• Files grow larger with each new project profile
• Difficult to remove outdated profiles
• Hard to maintain a clean configuration
• Error-prone manual editing

This script allows you to:

1. Maintain separate credential and config files for each project
2. Automatically merge them into your AWS CLI configuration
3. Backup existing files before making changes
4. Only update when necessary (based on file differences)

The script:

1. Scans designated directories for project-specific credential and config files
2. Sorts them by filename (allowing date-based sorting)
3. Merges them into a temporary file
4. Compares with existing AWS CLI config files
5. If different, backs up existing files and replaces them with the merged version

1. Create two directories in your working directory:

   • credentials/: For AWS credential files
   • configs/: For AWS config files

2. Save the script as aws-cli-config-manager.ps1 in the same directory

Store your project-specific files using this naming pattern:

• Credentials: credentials.YYYY-MMDD.project-name
• Config: config.YYYY-MMDD.project-name

Example:

./
├── credentials/
│   ├── credentials.2024-0301.project-a
│   ├── credentials.2024-0310.project-b
│   └── credentials.2024-0315.project-c
└── configs/
    ├── config.2024-0301.project-a
    ├── config.2024-0310.project-b
    └── config.2024-0315.project-c

Standard execution:

.\aws-cli-config-manager.ps1

Debug mode (shows all steps without making changes):

.\aws-cli-config-manager.ps1 -Debug

Output when running in debug mode:

PS> .\aws-cli-config-manager.ps1 -Debug
[DEBUG] Running in debug mode
[DEBUG] Current working directory: C:\Users\username\aws-settings
[DEBUG] AWS credentials path: C:\Users\username\.aws\credentials
[DEBUG] AWS config path: C:\Users\username\.aws\config
[DEBUG] Credentials directory: C:\Users\username\aws-settings\credentials
[DEBUG] Backup path: C:\Users\username\.aws\credentials.bak
[DEBUG] Found 3 files (pattern: credentials.*):
[DEBUG]   - C:\Users\username\aws-settings\credentials\credentials.2024-0301.project-a
[DEBUG]   - C:\Users\username\aws-settings\credentials\credentials.2024-0310.project-b
[DEBUG]   - C:\Users\username\aws-settings\credentials\credentials.2024-0315.project-c
...
[DEBUG] Completed debug mode run - no actual changes were made

Output when running in normal mode:

PS> .\aws-cli-config-manager.ps1
Backed up existing file to: C:\Users\username\.aws\credentials.bak
Successfully updated file: C:\Users\username\.aws\credentials
Backed up existing file to: C:\Users\username\.aws\config.bak
Successfully updated file: C:\Users\username\.aws\config
Process completed: 2 file(s) updated

• Order Control: Files are processed in alphabetical order, so you can control the order by adjusting the date in the filename.
• Always First/Last: Use special dates to ensure certain profiles always appear first or last:

  credentials.0000-0000.always-first  # Always first
  credentials.9999-9999.always-last   # Always last
  

• Profile Overriding: Later files override earlier ones with the same profile names.

• The script maintains one backup version (.bak) for each file
• Files are processed in binary mode to preserve line endings
• The script only updates files when differences are detected

MIT