Install sops with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• sops

Project history

The official README and docs say SOPS was initially launched at Mozilla in 2015 by Adrian Utrilla and Julien Vehent. The project later moved under the `getsops` organization and was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a Sandbox project in 2023.

SOPS grew out of operational pain around hand-managed PGP-encrypted files. Its official credits name hiera-eyaml, credstash, sneaker, password-store, and years of manual PGP management as inspirations.

Adoption history

SOPS became a standard secrets-management CLI in infrastructure repositories because it encrypts values in structured files while leaving enough metadata for automated decryption by CI, deployment tools, and operators with the right identities.

The package-manager metadata in this batch shows broad adoption across Homebrew, Alpine, Chocolatey, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, Scoop, winget, and openSUSE. That cross-platform packaging reflects how often SOPS is used both on developer laptops and in automation.

How it is used

A typical SOPS workflow is to create or edit an encrypted file with `sops`, commit the encrypted file, and decrypt or publish it only where the configured KMS, age, PGP, Vault/OpenBao, or cloud identity allows access.

Projects commonly keep `.sops.yaml` at a repository root to define `creation_rules` for new files. The official docs say SOPS recursively looks for `.sops.yaml` and that other names require an explicit `--config` option.

Why package nerds care

SOPS is package-nerd significant because it solved a painful operational gap with a small CLI instead of a central secrets service: encrypted structured files could live in Git and still be edited safely.

Its package spread also shows the modern DevOps pattern of one portable binary becoming shared workflow glue across macOS laptops, Linux CI runners, Windows machines, and Kubernetes-oriented tooling.

Timeline

• 2015: SOPS launched as a Mozilla project.
• 2023: SOPS donated to CNCF as a Sandbox project.
• 2026: SOPS v3.13.2 released on GitHub.

Related projects

• hiera-eyaml, credstash, sneaker, and password-store are named by the SOPS project as inspirations.
• age, PGP, AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HashiCorp Vault, OpenBao, and other KMS integrations are central to SOPS usage.
• Kubernetes secret workflows and GitOps repositories are common operational contexts for SOPS, even though SOPS itself remains a standalone CLI.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/getsops/sops
• https://api.github.com/repos/getsops/sops/releases
• https://getsops.io/docs/
• https://getsops.io/docs/usage/identities/config-file/
• https://github.com/getsops/sops
• input.json source_facts.package-manager