Question

I have a custom build and deployment script which work over SSH and deploy to servers (on running MacOS). The bash script does a lot of simple things like copying files, backing up the old ones and applying the correct SQL scripts for a forward moving database. But there are some advanced things like starting a remote SQL upgrade procedure which can be disconnected from and once the deployment script is started again it only goes forward if the SQL script has been applied completely (in short there is some flow control happening and bash is not really ideal for such stuff)

The script is already huge and is a mess since bash is not meant for such kind of detailed logic. Can you recommend some tools, libraries which would make things easier.

Answer 1

For what you tell us, I think you need a deployment tool, rather than a configuration management tool.
To simplify, I’ll distinguish the two like this:

• A deployment tool is a ‘push’ tool: When you press the button, the required actions are run to make the deployment. It’s a one-step process (it can have multiple actions, but it’s launched once).
• A configuration management tool is usually a ‘pull’ tool, where your servers periodically check if their configuration is exactly as the CM server tells them to be – and apply changes, if needed. You configure your servers once, and after that the system assures that all is as it should be. It is also a great tool to easily clone systems.

For deployment tools, I personally know Fabric, a great Python tool. But there is also Capistrano in the Ruby world. I don’t know of any others.

For CM tools, Puppet and Chef seem to be the preferred choice of people nowadays. Cfengine is an older tool, which had some problems (I don’t know if that has changed).