Environments

Stelvio makes it easy to manage different deployment environments like development, staging, and production. Each environment gets its own isolated AWS resources with automatic naming to prevent conflicts.

How Environments Work

When you deploy with Stelvio, every AWS resource gets named with this pattern:

{app-name}-{environment}-{resource-name}

For example, if your app is called "my-api" and you deploy to the "staging" environment, a DynamoDB table named "users" becomes my-api-staging-users.

Default Behavior

If you don't specify an environment, Stelvio uses your computer username:

stlv deploy  # Deploys to your personal environment (e.g., "john")

This gives every developer their own isolated sandbox to work in without conflicts.

Customizing Your Personal Environment Name

Stelvio stores your personal environment name in .stelvio/userenv. You can customize this if needed:

# Create custom personal environment name
echo "myname" > .stelvio/userenv

# Now deployments use "myname" instead of your computer username
stlv deploy  # Deploys to "myname" environment

This is useful when:

• Multiple developers share computers or usernames
• You want a consistent environment name across different machines
• Your computer username contains special characters

File Location

The .stelvio/userenv file is project-specific and should be added to .gitignore since it's personal to each developer.

Environment Commands

Deploy to Different Environments

# Personal environment (default)
stlv deploy

# Staging environment
stlv deploy staging

# Production environment
stlv deploy prod

Preview Changes by Environment

# See what would change in staging
stlv diff staging

# See what would change in your personal environment
stlv diff

Destroy Environment Resources

# Destroy your personal environment
stlv destroy

# Destroy staging (be careful!)
stlv destroy staging

Configuring Environments

You can define which environments are valid for your project:

from stelvio.config import StelvioAppConfig, AwsConfig


@app.config
def configuration(env: str) -> StelvioAppConfig:
    return StelvioAppConfig(
        aws=AwsConfig(region="us-east-1"),
        environments=["staging", "prod"]  # Valid shared environments
    )

With this configuration:

• Anyone can deploy to their personal environment (username)
• Only "staging" and "prod" are accepted as shared environments
• Stelvio will validate environment names and show an error for invalid ones

Environment-Specific Configuration

You can customize settings per environment:

@app.config
def configuration(env: str) -> StelvioAppConfig:
    return StelvioAppConfig(
        aws=AwsConfig(
            region="us-east-1",
            profile="production" if env == "prod" else "default"
        ),
        environments=["staging", "prod"]
    )

Best Practices

Personal Development

• Use your personal environment (default) for active development
• Experiment freely - it's isolated from others
• Clean up regularly with stlv destroy when done with features

Shared Environments

• Use confirmation prompts for shared environments (Stelvio asks automatically)
• Document environment purposes in your team
• Consider using different AWS regions or accounts for production

Naming Conventions

• Keep environment names short and clear: dev, stag, prod
• Avoid special characters - stick to letters and numbers
• Be consistent across projects