Deployah

Deployah is a tool to deploy software systems in a very specific context:

• the system consists of multiple repositories
  • which are using the git VCS
  • that are not dependent on each other on a source code level
  • but work together as a systems
• the system runs on Linux
  • and needs access to the hardware
  • is not using containers
• the system needs to be tested on target hardware
• the system will also be occasionally developed on the target hardware

Workflow

Deployah aims to simplify your life if you are in the specific situation described above.

It starts with a new deployah directory on your target machine, which itself can be version controlled via git or similar.

mkdir myprojectdeployment

Deployah uses a deploay.toml file to control your deployahment.

You can create one using the command: deployah init.

This will create a file with this content:

title = ""
name = ""

You can now manually set the title for the deployah file and the project name. Alternatively, you could also use tha above command with flags: deployah init --title="file title" --name="project name".

Now you can add a repository: deployah add.

This will change the file to:

title = "file title"
name = "project name"

[[repos]]
name = ""
url = ""
branch = ""

Again, you can manually set the values or use the command with flags. The easiest way is probably to set up the file with init and add and then modify the file manually.

You can copy-paste the [[repos]] section to add more repos. The name is the name of the directory the repo will be cloned into, the url is the address of the git repository (you can get it i.e. from GitLabs Clone button) and branch is the branch you want.

Once you set up your deployah.toml you can get all the repositories by running deployah update. The same command will update your repositories by fetching the latest changes and checking out the branches if you change them.

In case you want to get rid of everything, deployah purge will delete all repositories, after asking you if you are really sure. The command is not yet aware of uncommitted changes and dirty work trees - so be careful!

A not yet implemented, but planned feature is the command deployah installah - this command will use the not yet invented installah tool, to install all the repositories according to an installah.toml file in their root. Installah will not be a build and install tool itself, but use whichever build system your project is based on. It will only provide a uniform interface to it and add some of the things commonly missing, like service file placement and service reload.

A future version of Installah will also not install the software into the actual system root, but will create a root tree in the deployahment directory, which will then be integrated with the actual system root using overlayfs or fusefs.

Install

• curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
• sudo apt install libssl-dev git
• curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python -
• cargo install deployah