Tools to help code deployment
Depending on the type of the technology you use to build your web sites, there are different ways to put your code out there. Since a lot of sites today are developed in PHP, updating probably means upload a bunch of scripts to the server.
One way to do this is uploading the whole directory from the site root and switch the Apache site directory using symbolic link. But if you only have a handful of files updated it is really not necessary to upload everything every time. And often times there are user uploaded content and log files generated by the web server in the file system, which you don’t want to lose during the process.
Another way that I prefer is using the “sync” methodology. Basically I use a tool to compare the differences between my local development drive and the remote directory, and let the tool handle the remote copying and deleting.
“rsync” it is a great tool from *nix family which can sync two locations using ssh protocol. Although it is command line based you can always write a simple script to automate it. But if you are developing from a Windows PC it might be a bit difficult. I used to run rsync under Cygwin on XP and it does very well backing up files from the remote server. However because of the different ways of handling file permission under Cygwin and Windows I had a lot of problem to commit to rsync as a deployment tool.
For a long time I also used a tool called “Site Publisher” from helexis.com. It is a small FTP based tool which you can use to set up different site profiles and sync the code from your local drive to remote directory. It has worked very well for me but there are a couple of issues that made me to look for new ones:
- No sftp support
- Since I have firewall installed I have to use “Active” mode for FTP. But Site Publisher seems to have some problem with this. It would hang during a transfer session, which is not acceptable for a production release.
Recently I found “InstantSync(TM)” from sitedesigner.com and have been very happy about it. It support sftp so I can probably shutdown the FTP server on my host. It also supports multiple site profiles and the file transmission has been rock solid. Although it cost $99 I think it is definitely worth the money.
During the search process I also evaulated TurboFTP and SynchronEX which didn’t fit my needs. In my opinion, TurboFTP is primarily a FTP tool so there are a lot of features that are great for FTP but not necessarily in my case. I just want something simple to use and does this one thing good. SynchronEX looks promising but its user interface to set up site profile is hard for me to comprehend.
Disclaimer: The tools reviews mentioned above are solely based on personal experience and I have no affiliation with the companies mentioned.