Setting secrets, and general configs, via files makes it much easier to migrate applications from Kubernetes environments also (what I had asked about here: What's the recommended way to load config is via a volume?), where an application is receiving secrets and config injection as files rather than environment variables.
A few years ago I used custom built deployment system that was limited to base64 encoding secrets as well, and there was no end to the problems that arose, such as people forgetting which secrets were base64 encoded, accidentally double base64ing, forgetting to unwrap on the other side, or oddities happening just like the issue @pier opened in `fly secrets import`should take into account values between double quotes · Issue #589 · superfly/flyctl · GitHub with quotes being included or not.
First class support for being able to set secrets as files and those files be tmpfs/shm securely mounted would be awesome in avoiding these mistakes and problems 