Installing the command-line executable

Assuming you have Rust/Cargo installed, run this command in a terminal:

cargo install bws

It will make the bws command available in your PATH if you've allowed the PATH to be modified when installing Rust. cargo uninstall bws uninstalls.

Back to the crate overview.

Readme

Bitwarden Secrets Manager CLI

A Rust CLI for interacting with the Bitwarden Secrets Manager. This is a beta release and might be missing some functionality.

Install

We offer three ways to install bws:

Cargo (crates.io)

Download bws via cargo from crates.io:

cargo install bws --locked

Install Script (from GitHub Releases)

Linux/macOS: curl https://bws.bitwarden.com/install | sh

Windows: iwr https://bws.bitwarden.com/install | iex

An optional -u/--uninstall flag can be passed to the POSIX script to uninstall the CLI. The PowerShell version accepts an equivalent -Uninstall flag. The uninstallation process will remove the bws binary and the configuration directory (~/.bws).

GitHub Releases (Manual)

Download a pre-built binary from the Releases page.

Usage

bws --help

How to enable shell autocompletions

Zsh

If completion is not enabled already, you need to enable it first:

echo "autoload -U compinit; compinit" >> ~/.zshrc

Enable autocompletions for the current user:

echo 'source <(/path/to/bws completions zsh)' >> ~/.zshrc

Bash

Enable autocompletions for the current user:

echo 'source <(/path/to/bws completions bash)' >> ~/.bashrc

For more detailed documentation, please refer to the Secrets Manager CLI help article.

Docker

We also provide a docker image preloaded with the bws cli.

# From the root of the repository
docker build -f crates/bws/Dockerfile -t bitwarden/bws .

docker run --rm -it bitwarden/bws --help

To use a configuration file, utilize docker bind mounting to expose it to the container:

docker run --rm -it -v "$HOME"/.bws:/home/app/.bws bitwarden/bws --help

How to build manpages

The manpages get built during compilation of the bws crate through the use of a build script. The output path of this build script can be located as follows:

MANPAGES_DIR=$(cargo build -p bws --message-format json | jq -r --slurp '.[] | select (.reason == "build-script-executed") | select(.package_id|contains("crates/bws")) .out_dir')

After running the provided commands, the built manpages should be located in $MANPAGES_DIR/manpages