ShutIt is an automation tool that models a user's actions on a terminal.
It can automate any process that can be run by a human on the command line with little effort.
It was originally written to manage complex Docker builds, but is a now general-purpose automation tool that supports bash, Docker, Vagrant, ssh and arbitrary build contexts.
If you want to know more about Docker, see the official site or take a look at the book by the creators of ShutIt - Docker in Practice.
ShutIt is also an educational tool, as it can produce videos of demos, capture reproducible steps required to set environments up, and even challenge you to get the right output (see grep-scales).
Some use cases:
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You like bash, want to automate tasks, have structure and support, but don't want to learn a configuration management framework that takes you away from the command line you know and love.
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Are a programmer who wants highly configurable stateless containers development, testing, and production.
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Want to build everything from source in a way that's comprehensible and auditable.
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Want to create instructive walkthroughs:
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Want to take your scripts and turn them into stateless containers quickly, without needing to maintain (or learn) a configuration management solution designed for moving-target systems.
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Are interested in "phoenix deployment".
![Example Setup] (https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit/blob/gh-pages/images/ShutIt.png)
We start with a "ShutIt Module", similar to a or a shell script, or a Dockerfile.
In the image above there are five of these. At a high level they each have the following attributes:
- a list of zero or more dependencies on other modules
- a unique number that represents its ordering within the available modules
- a set of steps (bash commands) for building the module
In the image we imagine a scenario where we want to build our blog into a docker image, with all its attendant content and config.
We instruct ShutIt to build the MyBlog module, and it runs the build as per the image on the right.
The container environment is set up, the modules are ordered, and the build steps are run. Finally, the image is committed, tagged and pushed as configured.
This is a core function of ShutIt - to manage dependencies and image building for complex image setups.
But it doesn't just run build steps, it also manages The ShutIt Lifecycle to make the build more robust and flexible.
- gathers all the modules it can find in its path and determines their ordering
- for all modules, it gathers any build-specific config (e.g. passwords etc.)
- it checks dependencies and conflicts across all modules and figures out which modules need to be built
- for all modules, it checks whether the module is already installed
- for all modules, if it needs building, it runs the build
- for all modules, run a test cycle to ensure everything is as we expect
- for all modules, run a finalize function to clean up the container
- do any configured committing, tagging and pushing of the image
These correspond to the various functions that can be implemented.
ShutIt provides a means for auto-generation of modules (either bare ones, or from existing Dockerfiles) with its skeleton command. See here for an example.
We always need help, and with a potentially infinite number of libraries required, it's likely you will be able to contribute. Just mail ian.miell@gmail.com if you want to be assigned a mentor. He won't bite
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/shutit-users shutit-users@groups.google.com
Since a core technology used in this application is pexpect - and a typical usage pattern is to expect the prompt to return. Unusual shell prompts and escape sequences have been known to cause problems. Use the shutit.setup_prompt() function to help manage this by setting up a more sane prompt. Use of COMMAND_PROMPT with echo -ne has been seen to cause problems with overwriting of shells and pexpect patterns.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (C) 2014 OpenBet Limited
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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