Audit your current project. Is your .env file accidentally exposed? Do you have an .env.example that is up to date? Can you adopt a custom naming convention like .env.laravel to improve your team’s workflow?
Use git rm --cached .env and rewrite history (if you’re the only one) or rotate all exposed secrets immediately. Advanced: Generating .env.laravel via CI/CD A robust deployment pipeline never stores .env files on disk in version control. Instead, generate them at deploy time. .env.laravel
// In bootstrap/app.php, modify the Application instance $app->loadEnvironmentFrom('.env.laravel'); Or, more commonly, you can set an environment variable before bootstrapping: Audit your current project
For example, to load a file named .env.laravel : modify the Application instance $app->