Hell

An interactive web ui for Capistrano that also provides a json api

Requirements

• Ruby 1.9.2
• Bundler

Installation

Simply add hell as a dependency in your Gemfile:

source 'http://rubygems.org'
source 'http://gems.github.com'

gem 'hell'

And then run the following in your app directory:

bundle install

Usage

Once installed, you'll want to run the hell binary:

hell

Note that if you have multiple capistrano versions installed for multiple repositories, you may need to instead use:

bundle exec hell

Then open localhost:4567 in your browser to get an interactive interface around your capistrano recipes.

Running commands

Hell provides an autocompleted list of all capistrano tasks you have setup, and you can run this against a specific environment as necessary. By default, hell will start the command in the background, and then use an EventSource to read the generated logfile.

When you run a task, that task is added to your history so that you may re-read the logs at a later date, as well as re-run the tasks as necessary. This history is done using localstorage, and as such is not shared amongst different users of your application.

Note that Hell does not provide persistence of generated tasks, nor does it perform locking of individual tasks. For now, suggest using tools such as Logstash to persist the logs, and using locking techniques within your capistrano tooling instead.

Capistrano as an API

Inspired by Github's internal Heaven app, Hell provides a simple, rest-like json api around Capistrano. XML-RPC implementation to come.

Available endpoints:

• /tasks: List all available tasks
• /tasks/search/:pattern: Search for a given, non-regex pattern
• /tasks/:name/background: Kicks off the execution of a task in the background and writes the output to a log file. Will respond with an id for future log file recovery.
• /tasks/:name/exists: Checks if a task exists
• /tasks/:name/execute: Kicks off the execution of a task and responds with the results using the sinatra streaming api. EventSource-compatible.
• /logs/:id/tail: Using the id provided by /tasks/:name/background, will start a sinatra stream on the log file in question.
• /logs/:id/view: Using the id provided by /tasks/:name/background, will output the current contents of a logfile. Useful for later recovery of the logs through the web api.

Note that the current response is subject to change, and as such is not documented, though we will attempt to augment rather than change them.

Configuration

The following environment variables are available for your use:

• HELL_APP_ROOT: Path from which capistrano should execute. Defaults to Dir.pwd.
• HELL_REQUIRE_ENV: Whether or not to require specifying an environment. Default: 1.
• HELL_LOG_PATH: Path to which logs should be written to. Defaults to Dir.pwd + '/log'.
• HELL_BASE_DIR: Base directory to use in web ui. Useful for subdirectories. Defaults to /.
• HELL_SENTINEL_STRINGS: Sentinel string used to denote the end of a task run. Defaults to Hellish Task Completed.

License

Copyright (c) 2014 SeatGeek

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.