For developers that use Visual Studio, since many years ago, User Secrets Manager helps you to maintain your secrets out of the solutions folder.

Solution Secrets extension for Visual Studio leverage on User Secrets Manager feature and goes further enabling secure secrets synchronization between development workstations and operating systems.

Why this extension?

When you change your development workstation, you usually clone your project code from a remote repository and then you would like to be up and running for developing and testing your code in a matter of seconds.

But if you have managed secrets with the tool User Secrets Manager you will not be immediately able to test your code because you will miss something very important on your new workstation: the secret settings that let your code work.

Using the Solution Secrets extension you can be immediately ready to start developing and testing on the new workstation or you can just sync secrets between different workstations.

How does it work?

This extension adds some new features to the secrets management for the entire solution. The capabilities of this extension are accessible through the Solution Context Menu:

Selecting the menu item "Solution Secrets", will open the submenu from where you can use the main features for managing and synching secrets:

Secrets are synchronized with a remote repository that can be:

• GitHub Gists

• Azure Key Vault

GitHub Gists

A "Gist" is a snippet of code that can either be public or secret. Visual Studio Solution Secrets uses only secret Gists.

GitHub Gists is the default repository used by Visual Studio Solution Secrets for storing solutions secrets. Secrets are collected, encrypted and pushed on your GitHub account in a secret Gist, so that only you can see them. The encryption key is generated from a passphrase or a key file that you specify during the one-time initialization phase of the tool.

GitHub Gists fits very well for personal use.

For configuring Visual Studio to use GitHub Gists, go to

Tools -> Options -> Solutions Secrets -> GitHub Gists

From here you can authorize access to your GitHub account and you can create the encryption key because even if your secrets are saved in a secret Gist, they can be accessed by someone that acknowledges the Gist URL, hence the secrets are encrypted before they are saved in a Gist.

Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets. Secrets are encrypted at rest and can be accessed only by authorized accounts. No one else can read their contents.

Since the secrets are encrypted at rest and communication with the key vault is secure because it is enforced as HTTPS / TLS 1.2, Visual Studio Solution Secrets does not encrypt the secrets by itself before sending them to the key vault, therefore it is not necessary to use the encryption key on the local machine.

This opens the scenario in which you can share the secrets of the solution with the development team. You just need to authorize the team with read or read/write access to the Azure Key Vault secrets, so that the team can pull secrets.

Azure Key Vault fits better for enterprise use and is the recommended way for sharing solution secrets within the team.

You can read the Azure Key Vault documentation here

For using Azure Key Vault, you must specify the key vault URL from

Tool -> Options -> Solution Secrets -> Azure Key Vault

Default Secrets Repository

Now that you have seen how to configure the use of GitHub Gists and Azure Key Vault as remote secrets repository, you need to specify which one of them must be used by default. This can be done by going to

Tools -> Options -> Solutions Secrets

Custom Settings per Solution

Solution Secrets v2.0 let you configure a custom remote repository for your solution. For customizing the synchronization settings go to

Solution Context Menu -> Solution Secrets -> Synchronization Settings...

The configuration dialog will let you select the repository type GitHub Gist

or Azure Key Vault

Conclusions

Solution Secrets v2.0 for Visual Studio is available only for Visual Studio for Windows and is based on the same code base as the Visual Studio Solution Secrets project.

Sharing secrets between Windows, macOS and Linux is possible thanks to the .NET tool Visual Studio Solution Secrets.

The tool works from the command prompt and is cross-platform. Since it shares settings and format with this extension, is possible to push secrets from Windows using the Solution Secrets for Visual Studio and pull secrets from macOS or Linux using the CLI tool.

Download from the Visual Studio Marketplace

• Solution Secrets 2022 | for Visual Studio 2022+

• Solution Secrets 2019 | for Visual Studio 2019

Solution Secrets extension is free and open source and its code is available on GitHub.

This tool works with the User Secrets Manager for helping you to maintain your secrets out of the solutions folder and helps you to synchronize secrets on all your development machines.

While User Secrets Manager works at the project level, Visual Studio Solution Secrets works on solutions and manage secrets synchronization for every project of the solution.

This new release adds more flexibility and control on secrets synchronization and opens a new scenario where you can safely share and synchronize secrets within your development team.

Visual Studio Solution Secrets synchronizes secret settings through the cloud quickly and securely.

The idea is to use a secure repository in the cloud for storing secret settings so that when you change the development machine, you don't have to copy any files from the old one.

Just install the tool, configure it and pull the solutions secrets on your new machine and you are ready to code.

It's fast!

Visual Studio Solution Secrets support two kinds of remote repositories:

• GitHub Gists

• Azure Key Vault

GitHub Gists

A "gist" is a snippet of code that can either be public or secret. Visual Studio Solution Secrets uses only secret gists.

GitHub Gists is the default repository used by Visual Studio Solution Secrets for storing solutions secrets. Secrets are collected, encrypted and pushed on your GitHub account in a secret gist, so that only you can see them. The encryption key is generated from a passphrase or a key file that you specify during the one-time initialization phase of the tool.

GitHub Gists fits very well for personal use.

Azure Key Vault

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets. Secrets are encrypted at rest and can be accessed only by authorized accounts. No one else can read their contents.

Since the secrets are encrypted at rest and communication with the key vault is secure because it is enforced as HTTPS / TLS 1.2, Visual Studio Solution Secrets does not encrypt the secrets by itself before sending them to the key vault, therefore it is not necessary to use the encryption key on the local machine.

This opens the scenario in which you can share the secrets of the solution with the development team. You just need to authorize the team with read or read/write access to the Azure Key Vault secrets, so that the team can pull secrets.

Azure Key Vault fits better for enterprise use and is the recommended way for sharing solution secrets within the team.

You can read the Azure Key Vault documentation here

How to install

The tool is installed using the dotnet command line interface:

dotnet tool install --global vs-secrets

For upgrading to the latest version, use the command:

dotnet tool update --global vs-secrets

Configure the encryption key and authorizations

In case you use GitHub Gists as secrets repository, after the tool is installed, you need to create the encryption key and then authorize the use of your GitHub Gists.

The local encryption key is not necessary with Azure Key Vault.

Create the encryption key from a passphrase:

vs-secrets init -p <your-passphrase>

Otherwise, you can create the encryption key from a key file with the command below:

vs-secrets init --keyfile <file-path>

In case the encryption key is compromised you can change it.

vs-secrets change-key --passphrase <new-passphrase>
vs-secrets change-key --keyfile <file-path>

When you change the encryption key with one of the above commands, any secret already encrypted on GitHub Gists is re-encrypted with the new key. In this way the compromised key becomes useless.

Repository configuration

As said, GitHub Gists is the default repository, but in case you need it, any solution can use a different repository for storing its secret settings.

For example, you can set up your projects to use GitHub Gists and work projects to use Azure Key Vault.

For configuring the solution to use GitHub Gists:

vs-secrets configure --repo github

For configuring the solution to use Azure Key Vault:

vs-secrets configure --repo azurekv --name <vault-name | vault-uri>

The --name option works only for Azure Key Vault repositories and can accept the key vault URI (ex: https://my-keyvault.vault.azure.net) or the resource name (ex: my-keyvault). In case you use the key vault resource name, it is then completed in its URI (ex: my-keyvault => https://my-keyvault.vault.azure.net).

For changing the default repository, use one of the commands below:

vs-secrets configure --default --repo github
vs-secrets configure --default --repo azurekv --name <vault-name | vault-uri>

Sometimes you need to check what is the default repository, or if the solution has a custom repository configuration.

The command configure list serves this purpose.

vs-secrets configure list [<folder-path>] [--all]

Push solution secrets

For pushing the secrets of the solution in the current folder:

vs-secrets push

For pushing the secrets of the solution in another folder:

vs-secrets push <solution-path>

For pushing the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

vs-secrets push --all
vs-secrets push <path> --all

Pull solution secrets

For pulling the secrets of the solution in the current folder:

vs-secrets pull

For pulling the secrets of the solution in another folder:

vs-secrets pull <solution-path>

For pulling the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

vs-secrets pull --all
vs-secrets pull <path> --all

Utility commands

Search for solutions that use secrets

You can use the tool for just search solutions and projects that use secrets

vs-secrets search [<solution-path>] [--all]

Checking the status

With the status command you can check for the status of the tool. The command below checks if the encryption key has been defined and if the tool has been authorized to access GitHub Gists:

vs-secrets status

If the current folder contains a solution, the status command will show also the synchronization status for the secrets of the solutions.

Optionally you can check the synchronization status in another folder specifying the folder path or in an entire folder tree adding the --all parameter. Here are some examples:

vs-secrets status --all
vs-secrets status c:\projects\my-project-folder
vs-secrets status c:\projects --all

Clear secret settings from the local machine

If there are secrets that you need to clear locally, the clear command erases the solution secrets from the local machine. It is equivalent to applying the command dotnet user-secrets clear to each project in the solution.

vs-secrets clear
vs-secrets clear .\my-solution.sln

Configuration files

Visual Studio Solution Secrets stores its configuration files in the machine's user profile folder.

The files generated by the tool are listed below.

Visual Studio Solution Secrets is a free open source tool and its code is available on GitHub.

With a very short introduction, Lex and Yacc are useful tools that you would use if you want to create a compiler, a transpiler or you just want to interpret a formal language.

YaccLexTools is focused on C#. Other tools are available for other programming languages like C/C++, F#, Java, etc.

YaccLexTools translantes Yacc and Lex files in C# code thanks to the tools GPPG and GPLEX and simplify the use of these tools in the C# projects building process.

Time to update

Some years have passed since I have created the YaccLexTools package aimed to simplify the use of Yacc and Lex files in C# projets. Everything is evolved since then and now we have a lot of .NET everywhere! And it's cross platform, too.

So, it's a long time that this upgrade was needed and now is the time. YaccLexTools is having its long awaited upgrade for finally working with .Net Core, .NET and cross platform along with the .NET Framework with the same easy and automated project setup. With this upgrade the package has been promoted to the version 1.0.0 and it is retro compatible with the projects that have used the old version 0.2.x since now.

When you upgrade the package from the Nuget Package Manager, it will try to automatically upgrade the project settings to the new build model so that everything will work fine as before with some fix and improvements.

For some reasons sometimes the update of the settings is not triggered. In these cases it is possible to upgrade the project settings from the Package Manager Console with this cmdlet

PM> Update-YaccLexToolsSettings

Major changes

• The package works with .NET Framework 2.0+, .Net Core 3.1+, .NET 5+ and can be used on every platform supported by .NET.
• The new build system is based on separate packages that provide the MSBuild targets and tooling for compiling .y and .lex files respectively with the tools GPPG and GPLEX.
• Huge simplification of the project settings. No more <Target> definitions and package specific settings and metadata.
• Common classes have been converted from public to internal for avoiding conflicts in case the project references more libraries and each of them have these classes defined.
• Files generated by GPPG and GPLEX will not include anymore sentitive data like the machine name and the username captured at the moment of the generation of files. There is no reason to publish these information in a public repository.

Powershell cmdlets (Windows only)

Cmdlets are still the same, but can be used only in Visual Studio for Windows. For adding a new parser the command is

PM> Add-Parser MyLanguage Sample.NameSpace

The Calculator example can be added as usual with

PM> Add-CalculatorExample

Obsolete cmdlets for removing parser settings have been removed because there are no more settings to remove :)

If you need to remove a parser, just remove the files from the Solution Explorer and it's done.

dotnet-ylt (Cross-platform)

Since cmdlets are not working on macOS and Linux and they do not work with projects other than .NET Framework, it has been necessary to create a new tool that replaces the cmdlets, but has the same features. The tool is cross-platform and can be installed with the command below

dotnet tool install dotnet-ylt --global

Installing dotnet-ylt globally lets you install it just once and not for every project.

Adding a parser to a .NET console application is very easy. Open the terminal in the project folder and type the command

dotnet ylt add-parser -p <parserName>

The parser name is given with the parameter -p or --parser.

For adding the calculator example:

dotnet ylt add-calculator

Both commands support the optional parameter -n or --namespace for creating the parser in the given namespace.

New build system

After adding the calculator example to a .NET 6 console application and after building it, in the Solution Explorer the project looks like this:

The files GplexBuffers.cs and ShiftReduceParserCode.cs are generated during the build process and no more when the parser is added to the project.

The project file becomes as below.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup Label="Calculator">
    <YaccFile Include="Calculator\Calculator.Language.grammar.y">
      <OutputFile>Calculator\Calculator.Parser.Generated.cs</OutputFile>
      <Arguments>/gplex /nolines</Arguments>
    </YaccFile>
    <None Include="Calculator\Calculator.Parser.Generated.cs">
      <AutoGen>True</AutoGen>
      <DesignTime>True</DesignTime>
      <DependentUpon>Calculator.Language.grammar.y</DependentUpon>
    </None>
    <LexFile Include="Calculator\Calculator.Language.analyzer.lex">
      <OutputFile>Calculator\Calculator.Scanner.Generated.cs</OutputFile>
    </LexFile>
    <None Include="Calculator\Calculator.Scanner.Generated.cs">
      <AutoGen>True</AutoGen>
      <DesignTime>True</DesignTime>
      <DependentUpon>Calculator.Language.analyzer.lex</DependentUpon>
    </None>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="YaccLexTools" Version="1.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

It is much more compact in respect to the previous format.

The code below is even more compact and produces the same results. The code above has the advantage to hide the generated files as sub-nodes of their respective source files, but for the moment this works only in Visual Studio for Windows. Maybe a future relase of Visual Studio for Mac will implement this feature. Below, the arguments for the YaccFile are omitted because they have the same default value: /gplex /nolines.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
    <ImplicitUsings>enable</ImplicitUsings>
    <Nullable>enable</Nullable>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup Label="Calculator">
    <YaccFile Include="Calculator\Calculator.Language.grammar.y">
      <OutputFile>Calculator\Calculator.Parser.Generated.cs</OutputFile>
    </YaccFile>
    <LexFile Include="Calculator\Calculator.Language.analyzer.lex">
      <OutputFile>Calculator\Calculator.Scanner.Generated.cs</OutputFile>
    </LexFile>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="YaccLexTools" Version="1.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

With the hope that these updates are useful to those who are already using the package and to all of those who will use it, see you in the next one!

ernstc

Old posts

• Languages and Translators with Visual Studio
• Yacc/Lex Tools v0.2

References

• Yacc/Lex Tools project repository: https://github.com/ernstc/YaccLexTools
• GPPG original repository: https://github.com/k-john-gough/gppg
• GPLEX original repository: https://github.com/k-john-gough/gplex
• YACC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacc
• LEX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)

This extension adds some new features to the secrets management for the entire solution. The capabilities of this extension are accessible trough the Solution Context Menu:

Features

• Solution secrets synchronization across user's development workstations.
• Deletion of user secrets for when you need to dismiss secrets from a development workstation.

Why this extension?

When you change your development workstation usually you clone your project code from a remote repository and then you would like to be up and running for developing and testing your code in a matter of seconds.

But if you have managed secrets with the tool User Secrets Manager you will not be immediatly able to test your code because you will miss something very important on your new workstation: the secret settings that let your code work.

Using the Solution Secrets extension you can be immediatley ready to start developing and testing on the new workstation or you can just sync secrets between different workstations.

Secrets synchronization

The synchronization is implemented through a cloud repository that in this case is GitHub Gist. The secrets are encrypted and pushed on GitHub in a secret Gist, so that only you can see them.

The encryption key is generated from a passphrase or a key file. Once you change the development workstation, you don't have to copy any file from the old one. Just install the extension, recreate the encryption key with your passphrase or your key file, authorize access to GitHub Gists and you are ready.

Cross platform secrets sharing

Sharing secrets between Windows, macOS and Linux is possible thanks to the .NET tool Visual Studio Solution Secrets. The tool is cross platform and since it shares settings and format with this extension, is possible to push secrets from Windows using the Solution Secrets extension and pulling the secrets from macOS or Linux using the CLI tool.

Download from the Visual Studio Marketplace

• Solution Secrets 2022 | for Visual Studio 2022+
• Solution Secrets 2019 | for Visual Studio 2019

Solution Secrets extension is free and open source and its code is available on GitHub.

A NEW VERSION IS AVAILABLE !!!

Visual Studio Solution Secrets has been updated to version 2.0. Click here to read about the news.

If you are good in DevOps practices, you should know that secrets (sensitive data like passwords, connection strings, access keys, etc.) must not be committed with your code in any case and must not be deployed with the apps.

Fortunately Visual Studio and .Net help us in separating secrets from our code with the User Secrets Manager tool that let us store secrets out of the solution folder. The User Secrets Manager hides implementation details, but essentially it stores secrets in files located in the machine's user profile folder.

You can find the User Secrets Manager documentation here.

The Problem

When you change your development machine usually you clone your project code from a remote repository and then you would like to be up and running for developing and testing you code in a matter of seconds.

But if you have managed secrets with the tool User Secrets Manager you will not be immediatly able to test your code because you will miss something very important on your new machine: the secret settings that let your code work.

The Solution

For being immediatley ready to start developing and testing on the new development machine you have three choices.

1. Manually copy secret files from the old machine to the new one, if you still have access to the old machine.

2. Recreate the secret settings on your new machine for each project of the solution, but this can be tedious because you have to recover passwords, keys, etc. from different resources and it can be time consuming.

3. Use Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool for synchronizing secret settings through the cloud in a quick and secure way.

The idea behind the Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool is to use GitHub Gists as the repository for your secrets. The tool collects all the secret settings used in the solution, encrypts and pushes them on GitHub in a secret Gist, so that only you can see them. The encryption key is generated from a passphrase or a key file that you specify during the one time initialization phase of the tool.

Once you change the development machine, you don't have to copy any file from the old one. Just install the tool, recreate the encryption key with your passphrase or your key file, authorize the tool on GitHub and you are ready.

How to use it

For installing Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool, use the command below:

dotnet tool install --global vs-secrets

After you have installed the tool, you need to create the encryption key and then authorize it to use yours GitHub Gists. You can do this with the command:

vs-secrets init -p <your-passphrase>

For creating the encryption key, by default the tool will ask you for a passphrase. If you prefer, you can use a key file as the input to the encryption key generation algorithm with the command below:

vs-secrets init --keyfile <file-path>

Push solution secrets

For pushing the secrets of the solution in current folder:

vs-secrets push

For pushing the secrets of the solution in another folder:

vs-secrets push --path <solution-path>

For pushing the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

vs-secrets push --all

or

vs-secrets push --path <path> --all

Pull solution secrets

For pulling the secrets of the solution in current folder:

vs-secrets pull

For pulling the secrets of the solution in another folder:

vs-secrets pull --path <solution-path>

For pulling the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

vs-secrets pull --all

or

vs-secrets pull --path <path> --all

Searching for solution secrets

You can also use the tool for just searching solutions and projects that use secrets

vs-secrets search

vs-secrets search --path <solution-path>

vs-secrets search --all

vs-secrets search --path <path> --all

Visual Studio Solution Secrets files

Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool stores its files in the machine's user profile folder.

Below are listed the files generated by the tool.

Visual Studio Solution Secrets is a free open source tool and its code is available on GitHub.