Aral Balkan

Shell scripts are very useful little things. Google App Engine makes deploying apps a single-line affair, but I was still finding myself going through a series of steps when deploying updates to The GAE SWF Project, mostly because I wanted to release the source code as a zip file for download. So, I hacked together a script in bash and now it's a painless process (I could probably have done the same thing using Ant, but I've also been wanting to play with bash scripts for a while now!)

Here it is, in case bits of it help you too:

#!/bin/bash
args=("$@")
if [ -z ${args[0]} -o -z ${args[1]} ]
then
	echo "Usage: update <version_from> <version_to>"
	exit
fi
 
releaseFolder="../releases/The_GAE_SWF_Project_$2"
zipFile="../releases/The_GAE_SWF_Project_$2.zip"
ftpFolder="/public_html/downloads/"
 
echo "THE GAE SWF Project. Updating and deploying from version $1 to $2."
 
if [ $1 != $2 ]
then
	echo "Updating the base template with new version number..."
 
	sed s/$1/$2/ < templates/base.html > templates/temp_base.html
	mv templates/temp_base.html templates/base.html
 
	read -p "Commit version $2 in SVN? [y/(n)] " tag
	if [ $tag == "y" ]
	then
		echo "Commiting the new base template to Subversion..."
		svn commit -m "Updated version numbers in base.html template to $2"
	else
		echo "Skipped commit."
	fi
fi
 
echo "Exporting a clean version of the trunk..."
rm -rf $releaseFolder > /dev/null
svn export -q http://svn1.cvsdude.com/osflash/gaeswf/trunk $releaseFolder
 
# Start the server and bring it up in the browser for testing.
echo "[[[ Please test this version in the browser. Hit Ctrl-C to stop server when ready. ]]]"
$releaseFolder/start
 
read -p "Tag version $2 in SVN? [y/(n)] " tag
if [ $tag == "y" ]
then
	echo "Tagging version $2..."
	svn cp http://svn1.cvsdude.com/osflash/gaeswf/trunk http://svn1.cvsdude.com/osflash/gaeswf/tags/$2 -m "Version $2"
else
	echo "Skipped tagging."
fi 
 
read -p "Ready to deploy? [y, (n)] " deploy
if [ $deploy == "y" ]
then
	echo "Zipping the source code..."
	rm $zipFile > /dev/null
	zip -rq $zipFile $releaseFolder
 
	# SFTP the source file to my blog.
	# Uses an expect script to achieve this.
	./ftpsource $2
 
	# Deploy the app to Google App Engine
	appcfg.py update .
else
	echo "Skipped deployment."
fi
 
# Open the remote site in Firefox.
open -a firefox http://gaeswf.appspot.com
 
echo "Version $2 successfully deployed."

I use a separate expect script to FTP the source zip file to aralbalkan.com:

#!/usr/bin/expect
 
set version [lrange $argv 0 0]
 
spawn sftp me@mydomain
expect "password:"
send "******\n";
expect "sftp>"
send "put ../releases/The_GAE_SWF_Project_$version.zip path/to/downloads/ \r"
expect "sftp>"
send "quit \r"

Expect is a very cool way to script interactive instances (and yeah, I didn't want to mess with SSH!)

Down and dirty scripting can be a liberating and useful experience sometimes

The Shell scripting for fun and profit article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.