Learn your shell!

So a couple weeks ago I finally decided to learn how to use bash functions. I knew they existed but I decided to ignore them for the longest time.

Often times you find yourself typing the same things over and over again into the shell. In our app we deploy 3 windows services and managing them can get really tedious.

~/lecode>sc query DovetailEmail-default

~/lecode>sc stop DovetailEmail-default

~/lecode>sc delete DovetailEmail-default

~/lecode>sc query DovetailRulesEngine-default

~/lecode>sc stop DovetailRulesEngine-default

~/lecode>sc delete DovetailRulesEngine-default

~/lecode>sc query DovetailMessaging-default

~/lecode>sc stop DovetailMessaging-default

~/lecode>sc delete DovetailMessaging-default

That’s a lot of typing, granted its not that bad when you use your bash history. But you end up hitting the up arrow and changing one word a lot.

Functions!

So when you keep repeating yourself over and over again you can quickly write a function that can save you precious keystrokes

~/lecode>function fsc() {<br /> for name in Email RulesEngine Messaging<br /> do<br /> sc $1 Dovetail$name-$2<br /> done<br /> }<br />

Now I can happily type

~/lecode>fsc query default

~/lecode>fsc stop default

~/lecode>fsc start default

It works for other repetitive tasks as well, ie the steps to deploy our app is as follows

~/lecode>rm -rf mydefault

~/lecode>bottles create-all

~/lecode>bottles bundle mydefault -profile default

~/lecode>mydefault/BottleRunner.exe deploy -profile default

Again… pretty easy to just use my bash history and hit the up arrow to run all the commands

but its really easy to make a function

~/lecode>function fdeploy() {<br /> rm -rf my$1<br /> bottles create-all<br /> bottles bundle my$1 -profile $1<br /> my$1/BottleRunner.exe deploy -profile $1<br /> }<br />

Then bam!

~/lecode>fdeploy default

~/lecode>fdeploy storyteller

~/lecode>fdeploy hrdemo

See thats way mo ‘betta than creating a .bat file cause then you have run in cmd.exe, you have to ignore it in git repository, clean up after yourself later….

And I just don’t like that, not one bit.

-Ryan