Depo

A shell script for deploying node.js applications to a remote server using ssh, git and virtualhosts.

Sample usage

Connect to your server and forward port 80 to port 8080 by running: (DepoProxy is listening to port 8080)

$ sudo iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080

Go back to your client where depo.sh is installed.
Now create a virtualhost for the beta branch of the example repository by running:

$ depo create beta.example.org https://github.com/john-doe/example beta    

A node server will now be running (using forever) and the beta branch will now be accessible from beta.example.org. Make some modifications, push them to the remote branch, and update the server using:

$ depo update beta.example.org    

Create another site

$ depo create www.example.org https://github.com/john-doe/example

The master branch will now be accessible from www.example.org, while beta.example.org will still point to the beta branch.

To see all the virtual hosts and repositories that are active on the server, run:

$ depo list
johndoe@example.orgs password: 

	Configured virtual hosts
	========================
	app.use(express.vhost('beta.exaple.org', require('/home/johndoe/public_html/beta.example.org').app));
	app.use(express.vhost('www.example.org', require('/home/johndoe/public_html/www.example.org').app));

	Folders and Git repositories
	============================
	                   Folder                      Repo
	        beta.example.org/ https://github.com/john-doe/example @ beta
	         www.example.org/ https://github.com/john-doe/example @ master

Installation

On your server

Put the folder DepoProxy somewhere on your server, enter the folder and run npm install to install its dependencies (currently express). Make sure that your SSH user can access this folder. You also need to install forever from https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever/

On your client

Put depo.sh on a client from where you would like to manage the deployments:

$ wget https://raw.github.com/charlie-rudenstal/depo/master/depo.sh
$ chmod +x depo.sh

Then open depo.sh in your favorite editor and configure the variables

• REMOTE_HOST
  Change to your remote server host (will connect using SSH)

• REMOTE_PATH_TO_PROXY_SERVER
  Will look for server.js (and create a server.js.tmp during the process). Must end with /

• REMOTE_PATH_TO_PUBLIC_HTML
  Folders for each site will be created at this path. DepoProxy and look for a start script such as server.js.

For easier access when you are working on your projects, copy it to /usr/bin without the .sh extension and mark it as executable

$ sudo cp depo.sh /usr/local/bin/depo
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/depo

Requirements

depo.sh will launch DepoProxy using forever (https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever/). Install forever on your server using

$ npm install forever -g

It's not necessary to use forever, you can modify depo.sh to use node or something else if you'd like.

For DepoProxy to work with your current Node.js Express applications you need to export the app to the proxy.

exports.app = app

And if you want to run it as a standalone application as well you can check for the existence of DepoProxy by using module.parent

if (module.parent) {
	exports.app = app;
} else {
	app.listen(80);
}

Usage

• depo create [nameOfVirtualHost] [repository] [optional branch]
  Setup a new virtualhost on the server and checkout the specified repository using git

   $ depo create beta.example.org https://github.com/john-doe/example beta    

• depo update [nameOfVirtualHost]
  Update the repository for the selected virtualhost on the server. (Reset to HEAD) This will remove possible local modifications in the server repository, it is not a merge.

   $ depo update beta.example.org

• depo list
  Show a list of all virtual hosts, folders, associated git repository urls and current branches on the remote server.

   $ depo list

• depo restart
  Restart the proxy server (using forever). Will start it if not already running.

   $ depo restart

How it works

depo.sh

depo.sh will access your server using SSH. It will modify the file server.js located at the server path you specify for DepoProxy (__REMOTE_PATH_TO_PROXY_SERVER__). It will also create new folders in the path _REMOTE_PATH_TO_PUBLIC_HTML and checkout a clone of the git repository you supply.

When running the list command it will return the virtual hosts defined in server.js, traverse the directory _REMOTE_PATH_TO_PUBLIC_HTML and retrieve the current repository url and branch for each directory inside, using git.

Virtualhosts with DepoProxy

When adding new virtual hosts using depo create depo.sh will connect to your server and re-generate server.js at __REMOTE_PATH_TO_PROXY_SERVER__. When a new virtualhost is added it will:

1. Remove the last line of server.js (app.listen(8080)),
2. Append a new app.use() statement with the virtualhost
3. Append app.listen(8080) again

Virtual hosts that depo.sh generates looks something like this:

app.use(express.vhost('beta.example.org', require('/home/johndoe/public_html/beta.example.org').app));

You may modify server.js as you see fit, but be sure to end it with app.listen() and make sure that there are no empty newlines after it.

Author
Charlie Rudenstål
charlie4@gmail.com