Question

I am trying to merge multiple linux commands in one line to perform deployment operation.
For example

cd /my_folder
rm *.jar
svn co path to repo
mvn compile package install

Answer 1

If you want to execute each command only if the previous one succeeded, then combine them using the && operator:

cd /my_folder && rm *.jar && svn co path to repo && mvn compile package install

If one of the commands fails, then all other commands following it won’t be executed.

If you want to execute all commands regardless of whether the previous ones failed or not, separate them with semicolons:

cd /my_folder; rm *.jar; svn co path to repo; mvn compile package install

In your case, I think you want the first case where execution of the next command depends on the success of the previous one.

You can also put all commands in a script and execute that instead:

#! /bin/sh

cd /my_folder \
&& rm *.jar \
&& svn co path to repo \
&& mvn compile package install

The backslashes at the end of the line are there to prevent the shell from thinking that the next line is a new command; if you omit the backslashes, you would need to write the whole command in a single line.

A more convenient way compared to using backslashes and && everywhere is to instruct the shell to exit the script if any of the commands fail. You do that using the set built-in function with the -e argument. With that, you can write a script in a much more natural way:

#! /bin/sh
set -e

cd /my_folder
rm *.jar
svn co path to repo
mvn compile package install

Save that to a file, for example myscript, and make it executable:

chmod +x myscript

You can now execute that script like other programs on the machine. But if you don’t place it inside a directory listed in your PATH environment variable (for example /usr/local/bin, or on some Linux distributions ~/bin), then you will need to specify the path to that script. If it’s in the current directory, you execute it with:

./myscript

The commands in the script work the same way as the commands in the first example; the next command only executes if the previous one succeeded. For unconditional execution of all commands, simply don’t call set -e:

#! /bin/sh

cd /my_folder
rm *.jar
svn co path to repo
mvn compile package install