Flash

Table of Contents

• What is Flash?
• Motivation
• Installation
• Basic Usage
• Commands
  • flash clone
  • flash info
  • flash run
• Contributing
• License

What is Flash?

Main purpose of Flash is to eliminate repetitive tasks, those of running the same commands on multiple directories.

It allows one to define:

• aliases for sets of commands to be run on multiple directories
• groups for grouping together multiple directories

Both groups and aliases can be defined in the .flash.yml configuration file.

Motivation

Simple configuration file

A place to define both groups and aliases.

Inspect output

See the output of flash commands runned on a group of projects.

Installation

gem install flash

Basic Usage

Flash requires a .flash.yml file in order to function. This should be defined at the root of your workspace folder.

# .flash.yml

frontend:
  - super-product1
  - super-product2
  - super-api
  - super-sso

libraries:
  - super-rest-client
  - super-core-js
  - super-core-css

aliases:
  update-master: git stash; git checkout master; git pull
  status: git status -s

clone:
  git: git@github.com:SuperDuper

Here we define two groups frontend and libraries. We will be allowed to run commands on each of these groups.

We can also define two special configuration sections:

• aliases: allows us two save repetitive and long commands
• clone: allows to define a base git URL from where projects in a group can be cloned

With a valid .flash.yml configuration file set in your current workspace you are now set to run flash commands.

Commands

Running flash will give you the following output:

Commands:
  flash clone GROUP        # Clone all projects found in GROUP config file
  flash help [COMMAND]     # Describe available commands or one specific command
  flash info [GROUP]       # Display information from config file
  flash run COMMAND GROUP  # Run one or more COMMAND(s) on the specified GROUP
  flash version            # Display Flash gem version

flash clone

flash clone GROUP

Allows to clone all projects defined in a GROUP by using the clone git base URL.

Getting back to our .flash.yml example file...

# .flash.yml

frontend:
  - super-product1
  - super-product2
  - super-api
  - super-sso

...

clone:
  git: git@github.com:SuperDuper

Running the following command...

flash clone frontend

will clone from SuperDuper organization all projects defined in frontend group.

flash info

flash info [GROUP]

This is a helper command for printing .flash.yml contents. Prints all file contents or just part of it (depending if group or other config section is specified).

flash run

flash run COMMAND GROUP

The heart of flash is the run command. It requires both a COMMAND and a GROUP. With this command one can run same tasks on all projects of same GROUP.

Note: COMMAND can be a standalone command, or be defined in aliases section (where it must be a list of commands, semi-column separated).

Getting back to our .flash.yml example file...

# .flash.yml

frontend:
  - super-product1
  - super-product2
  - super-api
  - super-sso

libraries:
  - super-rest-client
  - super-core-js
  - super-core-css

aliases:
  update-master: git stash; git checkout master; git pull
  status: git status -s

here are some commands you can run:

# Update master branch.
flash run update-master frontend
flash run update-master libraries

# Display status.
flash run status frontend

# List some files.
flash run ls frontend 

# Lets push master branch to origin/staging (forced) for all frontend projects.
flash run "git checkout master ; git checkout -B staging ; git push -f ; git checkout master" frontend

# This last command could be aliased to `master-to-staging`, which would result in:
flash run master-to-staging frontend

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

APACHE-2.0 See LICENSE for details.