Hide Plain Text Password in development.rb

Question

In order to set up actionmailer/devise confirmation email I need to provide the details to a real gmail account:

  config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
  config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
  address:              'smtp.gmail.com',
  port:                 587,
  domain:               'example.com',
  user_name:            'gmailaccount@gmail.com',
  password:             'gmailpassword',
  authentication:       'plain',
  enable_starttls_auto: true  }

But if I commit this file on github on a public repository it will be visible to the entire world.

One solution would be to make a private repository, but I don't think that is the best one. Maybe I want to share the code with other developers I don't know but I don't want them to see my email password.

The other sollution would be to add the developent.rb file to gitignore. However, I think that I would like to keep it in my version control as it changes with the progression of the project and is quite important to running the app.

How can I configure actionmailer without potentially revealling my gmail password to other developers/people via github?

----------------------FIX----------------------

This is a duplicate question.. I did know know how to properly search for the information.

There is a great answer on how to use environment variables here:

Rails : How to store mailer password safely?

Answer 1

What you generally do is:

• version a template file (with documentation to explain each field value)
• version a script able to generate the action file
• declare that script as a content filter driver in a .gitattribute (as in here)
• store the actual value outside the git repo (that way, they cannot be pushed by mistake)

^{(image from "Customizing Git Attributes" from the Git Book)}

That would generate the right file with the right values.

Answer 2

You could encrypt that single file. That way it would be tracked in the repo, but only you could actually read it.

There is a tool named git-crypt doing that (disclaimer: I haven't used it myself).