A cross-host ruby bridge. Allows you to create and operate on objects created in ruby runtimes on remote hosts. Frontier uses an ssh connection and tunnels serializes method calls and replies through it. It's inspired by Rush, but without the limitation of needing a server process running on the remote host.
In its pure form, the shell simply forwards all missing methods to the unix shell (bash or whatever you use). But you can extend the shell through a system of mixins. There's a few builtin mixins, and you can write your own.
-
Filesystem: the 'filesystem' mixin provides the method
#[](glob)which returns an array of Pathname objects. -
Process: the 'process' mixin provides the method 'process' which uses PQL internally to enumerate or find processes.
Frontier uses Marshal internally to serialize objects and Marshal has certain limitations which objects it can serialize. For example it can't serialize Proc objects, bindings or IO objects. So you need to pay attention where the object you created lives, whether on the local or remote host.
For example this won't work:
server.process.where(:command => /ruby/).each {|p| puts p }
But this will
server.process.where(:command => /ruby/).all.each {|p| puts p }
This is because where() returns a Plucky::Query object which lives on the server, so passing a proc to it doesn't work. but where().all() returns an Array which is lives in the process space on the local host and you can treat it just like any other array.
require 'frontier'
server = Frontier::Shell.new('user@server.tld')
# Run commands in the unix shell (bash or whatever you use)
puts server.uname
puts server.ls '*.rb'
# Find all ruby processes
server.load('process')
puts local.process.where(:command => /ruby/).fields(:pid, :rss).all
# Get a list of all *.rb files
server.load('filesystem')
puts server['*.rb']
# Recursively copy the ./config directory to the server
require 'pathname'
config = Pathname.new('./config/')
Frontier::Utils.xfer(server['destination/directory'], config)
# Copy file.txt from server to server2
server2 = Frontier::Shell.new('user@server2.tld')
Frontier::Utils.xfer(server2['.'], server['file.txt'])
Copyright (c) 2010 by Tomas "wereHamster" Carnecky (tomas.carnecky@gmail.com)