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Tools: I Got Tired of Passing --profile on Every OCI CLI Command (2026)

2026-05-23 0 views admin
Tools: I Got Tired of Passing --profile on Every OCI CLI Command (2026)

What the OCI CLI Actually Gives You

How It Works

What It Looks Like

The ocid Bonus

Install

Profile Setup This is a problem you only run into if you work for Oracle directly or you work at a Cloud/DevOps MSP managing OCI for multiple clients. Most people will never touch it. If you are reading this, you are probably not most people. The OCI CLI already demands a --compartment-id on almost every command. Compartment IDs are long, they are not memorable, and you need a different one depending on what you are looking at. That was already a nightmare before you add multiple tenancies to the picture. Once you are juggling prod, staging, dev, and a handful of client accounts, passing --profile on top of --compartment-id on every single command becomes the kind of friction that breaks you. The OCI CLI reads config from ~/.oci/config by default. You can point it at a different file with OCI_CONFIG_FILE, and select a named profile within that file with OCI_CLI_PROFILE. That is the full surface area you have to work with. The multi-profile story in the official tooling is basically: put multiple [PROFILE_NAME] sections in one config file and pass --profile PROFILE_NAME every time. If you forget the flag, you hit whichever profile is in [DEFAULT]. This works but it is tedious, and it is session-scoped - export the env var in one terminal, open another, you are back to default. ocswitch fixes the persistence problem by writing the active profile to ~/.oci/active_profile and restoring it at shell startup. Profiles are separate config files in ~/.oci/: One file per tenancy, named config_<profile>. When you switch: Two things happen: ~/.oci/active_profile gets written with the string prod, and OCI_CONFIG_FILE plus OCI_CLI_PROFILE are exported in the current shell. Every oci command you run after that hits the prod tenancy. The persistence part lives at the top of the script, outside the function, so it runs every time the shell sources the file: Open a new terminal, source kicks in, reads the state file, exports the right vars. The active profile follows you across sessions without any extra steps. ocswitch list shows all detected profiles (anything matching ~/.oci/config_*) with the active one highlighted in Oracle red. ocswitch clear removes the state file and unsets both env vars. Tab completion is included for both bash and zsh. Hit tab after ocswitch and you get list, clear, and all your profile names. There is a second function in the script: ocid. It reads the active config, pulls the tenancy OCID and user OCID out of it, and calls the OCI IAM API to resolve the human-readable names: Useful when you have switched between a few profiles and want to confirm exactly which tenancy you are currently pointing at before running something destructive. Each profile is a standard OCI config file at ~/.oci/config_<profile>. The section header inside the file uses the same name as the file itself, not [DEFAULT]: So ~/.oci/config_staging has [config_staging] inside, ~/.oci/config_dev has [config_dev], and so on. The full source is in this gist. Two files, one for bash and one for zsh, no external dependencies beyond the OCI CLI itself. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to ? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse

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--compartment-id --compartment-id ~/.oci/config OCI_CONFIG_FILE OCI_CLI_PROFILE [PROFILE_NAME] --profile PROFILE_NAME ~/.oci/active_profile ~/.oci/config_prod ~/.oci/config_staging ~/.oci/config_dev ~/.oci/config_prod ~/.oci/config_staging ~/.oci/config_dev ~/.oci/config_prod ~/.oci/config_staging ~/.oci/config_dev config_<profile> ocswitch prod ocswitch prod ocswitch prod ~/.oci/active_profile OCI_CONFIG_FILE OCI_CLI_PROFILE _oci_state="${HOME}/.oci/active_profile" if [[ -f "$_oci_state" ]]; then _oci_profile=$(cat "$_oci_state") _oci_cfg="${HOME}/.oci/config_${_oci_profile}" if [[ -f "$_oci_cfg" ]]; then export OCI_CONFIG_FILE="$_oci_cfg" export OCI_CLI_PROFILE="config_${_oci_profile}" fi fi _oci_state="${HOME}/.oci/active_profile" if [[ -f "$_oci_state" ]]; then _oci_profile=$(cat "$_oci_state") _oci_cfg="${HOME}/.oci/config_${_oci_profile}" if [[ -f "$_oci_cfg" ]]; then export OCI_CONFIG_FILE="$_oci_cfg" export OCI_CLI_PROFILE="config_${_oci_profile}" fi fi _oci_state="${HOME}/.oci/active_profile" if [[ -f "$_oci_state" ]]; then _oci_profile=$(cat "$_oci_state") _oci_cfg="${HOME}/.oci/config_${_oci_profile}" if [[ -f "$_oci_cfg" ]]; then export OCI_CONFIG_FILE="$_oci_cfg" export OCI_CLI_PROFILE="config_${_oci_profile}" fi fi ocswitch list ~/.oci/config_* ocswitch clear Tenant Name: mycompany-production Tenant ID: ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... User Email: [email protected] Tenant Name: mycompany-production Tenant ID: ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... User Email: [email protected] Tenant Name: mycompany-production Tenant ID: ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... User Email: [email protected] curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.zsh \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.zsh \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.zsh \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.bash \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.bash \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc curl -fsSL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amaanx86/2621a181e2f4b572a1904d65748d66bd/raw/ocswitch.bash \ -o ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash echo 'source ~/.oci/ocswitch.bash' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc ocswitch # show help + logo ocswitch list # list profiles (active highlighted) ocswitch <profile> # switch profile (persists across all terminals) ocswitch clear # clear active profile ocswitch # show help + logo ocswitch list # list profiles (active highlighted) ocswitch <profile> # switch profile (persists across all terminals) ocswitch clear # clear active profile ocswitch # show help + logo ocswitch list # list profiles (active highlighted) ocswitch <profile> # switch profile (persists across all terminals) ocswitch clear # clear active profile ~/.oci/config_<profile> [config_prod] user=ocid1.user.oc1..aaaa... fingerprint=xx:xx:xx:... tenancy=ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... region=us-ashburn-1 key_file=~/.oci/oci_api_key.pem [config_prod] user=ocid1.user.oc1..aaaa... fingerprint=xx:xx:xx:... tenancy=ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... region=us-ashburn-1 key_file=~/.oci/oci_api_key.pem [config_prod] user=ocid1.user.oc1..aaaa... fingerprint=xx:xx:xx:... tenancy=ocid1.tenancy.oc1..aaaa... region=us-ashburn-1 key_file=~/.oci/oci_api_key.pem ~/.oci/config_staging [config_staging] ~/.oci/config_dev [config_dev]

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