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Introducing atmos list affected: A Better Way to See What Changed

· 3 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Quickly identify which components and stacks are affected by your changes with the new atmos list affected command.

What Changed​

We've added a new atmos list affected command that provides a human-readable table view of affected components and stacks between Git commits. This complements the existing atmos describe affected command, which outputs detailed JSON/YAML for automation.

atmos list affected

The command displays results in a clean table format with visual status indicators:

┌────────┬─────────────────────┬──────────────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ Status │ Component           │ Stack            │ Type     │ Affected │
├────────┼─────────────────────┼──────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ ●      │ vpc                 │ plat-ue2-dev     │ terraform│ component│
│ ●      │ vpc                 │ plat-ue2-prod    │ terraform│ component│
│ ●      │ eks                 │ plat-ue2-dev     │ terraform│ stack.vars│
│ ◐      │ rds                 │ plat-ue2-staging │ terraform│ file     │
└────────┴─────────────────────┴──────────────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

Why This Matters​

Before this change, understanding what components were affected by your changes required parsing JSON output or using tools like jq. Now you can get a quick overview directly in your terminal.

Visual status indicators make it easy to spot:

  • ● Enabled components ready for deployment
  • ◐ Locked components that shouldn't be modified
  • ○ Disabled components

Multiple output formats support different workflows:

  • table (default) - Human-readable overview
  • json / yaml - Machine-readable for automation
  • csv / tsv - Spreadsheet and scripting integration

How to Use It​

Basic Usage​

Compare your current branch against main:

atmos list affected

Compare Against Specific References​

# Compare against a specific branch
atmos list affected --ref refs/heads/develop

# Compare against a specific commit
atmos list affected --sha abc123def456

Filter and Sort Results​

# Filter by stack
atmos list affected --stack prod-us-east-1

# Sort by component name
atmos list affected --sort component:asc

# Include dependent components
atmos list affected --include-dependents

Custom Column Selection​

# Show only specific columns
atmos list affected --columns component,stack,affected

# Named columns with templates
atmos list affected --columns "Component={{ .component }},Stack={{ .stack }}"

CI/CD Integration​

# JSON output for automation
atmos list affected --format json

# CSV for processing
atmos list affected --format csv > affected.csv

# Use pre-cloned repository
atmos list affected --repo-path /tmp/target-repo --format json

When to Use Each Command​

Use CaseCommand
Quick overview of changesatmos list affected
CI/CD pipelines (full data)atmos describe affected --format json
Spreadsheet analysisatmos list affected --format csv
Dependency visualizationatmos list affected --include-dependents

Learn More​

Get Involved​

We'd love your feedback! Try out atmos list affected and let us know how it works for your workflow. Open an issue on GitHub or join us in Slack.