Change user's command prompt color based on AWS "--profile"

Question

The new unified AWS CLI gives us the ability to pass in a "--profile" to switch between accounts. Very cool feature, but I see this getting us in a lot of trouble (if, for example a user forgets they are in PROD rather than DEV and run commands that whack stuff out).

I don't see any way to hook the "--profile" into something like a ".bashrc" script where we could do things like changing the prompt color (to like red) & adding "PRODUCTION" to the prompt.

The only way I could imagine doing this is writing a wrapper bash script named something like "gotoprod.sh" which changes prompt & sets up the "--profile". Anything more elegant in the aws cli tools themselves?

Answer 1

The --profile option is passed to each individual command, so technically you are not "IN" a profile until the command is running. For that reason, I don't think it's possible to do exactly what you're trying to do using just the --profile switch.

However, if you use the AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE environment variable, it is possible.

Here's what I do in .bashrc:

function startaws {
  export AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE=$1
} 

(You can name the function whatever you like, of course).
This allows you to do something like startaws dev, which both loads your "dev" profile, AND gives you the $AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE environment variable, based on which you can now change your bash prompt.