wauth Library Unifies Docker Secret Loading for Dev and Production Environments

Developers often face friction when writing separate secret-management code for local development and production Docker Swarm deployments. The open-source Python library wauth addresses this through its DriverFactory, which automatically detects the runtime environment and selects the appropriate driver. Inside a Docker container, it reads secrets from the secure in-memory path /run/secrets, while outside it falls back to an encrypted local SQLite vault. This eliminates common pitfalls such as hardcoded paths, secrets exposed via environment variables, and code that crashes when tested outside Docker. The library is publicly available on GitHub and can be installed via pip using the package name wauth.