This process is inspired by Heroku git deployment feature. This tutorial works with hg, git and mostly with any other DVCS with minor alteration. It has two major steps
STEP 1: On your *nix Server

1. Install mercurial on your server – it should be easy
2. Setup SSH access to mercurial repository
   Your server should be able to login to code repository and pull the latest code. Its easier to use SSH than passwords.
   On your server machine:
   1. Open terminal
   2. Enter ssh-keygen
   3. Give a name or you can use the default name id_rsa
   4. When it asks “Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):” press enter. No Password
   5. Once the key generation is complete. You can verify the same using ls -a ~/.ssh
   6. Add this new identity to SSH agent ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
   7. Now we need to add this public key to bitbucket or any other provider cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. Copy the output
   8. For bitbucket, go to account -> SSH keys, add the above output to your ssh keys

   Now your server is set to access your repositories with out the need of password.

3. Now we need to setup the Hg repository inside web accessible directory. For example, your web accessible folder could be
/home/user_home/public_html or /var/www/html
   or in case of phython it can be anywhere /home/user_home/my_project_code
4. To deploy php application tweet4blood, clone the repo inside the directory using ssh url
   
cd /home/user_home/public_html
hg clone ssh://hg@bitbucket.org/thejeshgn/tweet4blood tweet4blood.com

5. Make sure to make the .hg folder (actual repository) inaccessible to the webserver either by .htaccess rule or changing the permissions etc

STEP 2: On your desktop

1. Install fabfile or fabric. On ubuntu search for fabric in Synaptic Package Manager
2. Create your fabfile, you can find the latest version of below example fabfile in my snippets project
3. To call any method in fabfile
   
$ cd /home/thej/my_deployment_scripts/tweet4blood/
$ fab hello


4. Fabric can also chain the calls
   
$ cd /home/thej/my_deployment_scripts/tweet4blood/
$ fab test hello

   Here it calls the test method first which sets the env variables and then calls hello
5. None of the env variables are necessary but providing env.user, env.hosts, env.password will avoid typing them everytime
6. BTW env.user, env.hosts, env.password are that of SERVER machine
7. To deploy the latest version to test
   
$ cd /home/thej/my_deployment_scripts/tweet4blood/
$ fab test deploy:tip

   In this case,
   • test method sets the env variables corresponding to TEST env
   • test method also sets application env specific consumer_key which later we will use to setup config.php, similarly you can use define databas_name, database_user_name etc
   • then as per chain deploy method is called with input variable version whose value now is “tip”
   • inside deploy the first call is cd (change directory) on remote server
   • at this point fab logs into the remote server using env.user, env.hosts, env.password
   • then control goes to the repo directory
   • runs hg pull which gets everything from bitbucket
   • runs hg update -C tip which is clean update to “tip” version
   • then CDs into auth folder
   • uses the Linux sid command to replace the env specific values in config.php
8. To deploy any other version to test. I usually tag the versions, so I will pass the tag name
   
$ cd /home/thej/my_deployment_scripts/tweet4blood/
$ fab test deploy:v.0.1.0


9. In case you want to shutdown the apache before the deployment and restart later, you can chain them too
   $ cd /home/thej/my_deployment_scripts/tweet4blood/
$ fab test apache_stop deploy:tip apache_start

STEP 3: Go deploy
Below I have embedded a rough version of fabfile.py for quick refrence. But as I told you can find the latest version of the same in my snippets.

Questions and suggestions are welcome.

################################################################
# It uses fabfile to build and deploy
# Ref: http://thejeshgn.com/2012/02/01/deployment-php-python-app-using-mercurial-and-fabfile
# usage:
#        cd to the folder
#        $ fab hello
#
#To deploy tagged version to test:
#        cd to the folder which has fab file
#        $fab test deploy:REPO_TAG_NAME
#
#To deploy latest version to test:
#        cd to the folder which has fab file
#        $fab test deploy:tip
#
#To deploy to prod:
#        cd to the folder which has fab file
#        $fab prod deploy:REPO_TAG_NAME
#
#

################################################################
from __future__ import with_statement
from fabric.api import *
from fabric.contrib.console import confirm

def hello():
    print("Welcome to web deployment.")

def test():
    env.user = 'user_name'
    env.hosts = ['100.100.100.100']
    env.password ='password'
    env.consumer_key ="test_xGxRxzXrxoxSxrxYxuxdxnxLxBxzQU00Q"

def prod():
    env.user = 'user_name'
    env.hosts = ['200.200.200.200']
    env.password ='password'
    env.consumer_key ="prod_xGxRxzXrxoxSxrxYxuxdxnxLxBxzQU00Q"

def update(version):
    with cd('/home/user_home/public_html/tweet4blood.com'):
        run('hg pull')
        run('hg update -C '+version)
    with cd('/home/user_home/public_html/tweet4blood.com/html/auth/'):
            consumer_key_defnition = "define('CONSUMER_KEY', '"+ +"');"
            run("sed -i 's/define('CONSUMER_KEY', 'xGxRxzXrxoxSxrxYxuxdxnxLxBxzQU00Q');/"+consumer_key_defnition+"/' config.php")

def apache_restart():
    sudo('/etc/init.d/apache2 restart') 

def apache_stop():
    sudo('/etc/init.d/apache2 stop') 

def apache_start():
    sudo('/etc/init.d/apache2 start')

def apache_status():
    sudo('ps aux | egrep "(PID|apache2)"')

def deploy(version):
    update(version)

I have a platinum account on Audible and I get 2 books for month in that plan. It works great except its DRMed and wont work on Linux. I need to figure out a way to export the audio so I can save them for later use. Audible allows backing up to the CDs through. CDs for heaven’s sake, who uses CDs anymore for backing up? And itunes is a PITA.

I am looking for good software which can undrm the books for me for my own personal usage. I found this list of tools but not sure yet. I would love to pay for the software. HELP.

This such a good example of DRM troubling god fearing, paying and non-pirate customer. All I want to do is backup what I have bought and it shouldnt be such a pain to a paid customer.

1. SOPA and PIPA are the worst laws that anybody can propose to stop piracy
2. They are actually anti-technology than anti-piracy
3. They break internet
4. Even though I am an India, It hurts me and my business
5. Internet is supposed to be international, not yet, it’s mostly controlled by USA
6. India has an habit of borrowing worst laws
7. In India we already have stupid lawyers and politicians who don’t get technology. I don’t want US laws to be an example for Indian law makers

Action:

1. If you are in USA, then call or mail your senator
2. Not in USA then petition the state department

As of now we have details of 4000+ albums, 22000+ songs and 3200+ artists. We have covered only hind movies from 1971 to 2011. I know, I know there are lots more to do. We need do 50s, 60s hindi films and we also need to do non film music. Well all I can say is its in progress.

Two best parts of the sites are Similar Songs suggestion using our internal recipe for each song. The recipe is not there yet. We are improving it almost on day today basis. But its worth showing off. Have a look and let me know what you feel.

MySwar Similar Songs

Next one is discover based on your likes and ratings. Rate the songs you like and MySwar will suggest you songs based on it. Again discover algorithm gets updated almost on daily basis.

Discover music on MySwar

It’s a standard LAMP stack, python and MongoDB in this case. I will probably write a detailed post on the technology and platform choices one day. Until then go ahead register for an account and enjoy. Of course suggestions are more than welcome.

1. Left Infosys. Enjoyed my stay at Infosys and it was time.
2. Joined Mavrix. Our first product MySwar is in private beta now. We will go public beta next week. Wait for a detailed post.
3. Janaagraha – Part 2. Continued working with Janaagraha as a technologist.
4. Not much travel, except for an unexpected amazing trip to London
5. First time I invested in Equity. I will write more about it later. Time to start planning for retirement.
6. Love, Life and Friends – Roller coaster in simple words.
7. Line of the year “Forgive, Forget and Move on”
8. Met Steve Woz.The best moment of the year. Unforgettable.
9. I have been writing “The Year that was” for last 5 years :) 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007

Now I can work with my repository from inside Sublime Text.

Its easy to install:

• On Linux go to command prompt
• cd ~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages
• hg clone http://code.thejeshgn.com/hg4subl
• Restart you Sublime Text

Now your tools menu should have Hg and related menus. Some of the menu’s are enabled only when you are inside a repo work folder. I have tested it only on Linux. If you are a windows user, let me know how it goes.
You can also use Ctrl+Shift+P to quickly access the commands.

The bottom panel is used to display the notifications to users. For example branch change in the working project

The plugin also can update itself. Go to Tools-Hg->hg4subl update. The notification panel show the information about the update

You can fork the project on bitbucket-hg4subl and send me pull requests if you have any.

I have a development repository for a ‘project’ called ‘proj-dev’. Every bit of code which makes sense will live here. Every team member has push access to this project. Lets say we developed over several months. Now we have reached some sane level where we could show it to our family. We use tags to bookmark stages of development. So after passing all rc.x.x.x (release candidate aka test releases) stages, we have reached v.0.1.0. Which probably is our alpha production release.

Now I clone/fork the ‘proj-dev’ to ‘proj-prod’. Only support and system admin team has push access to ‘proj-prod’. Anything that has to get onto production servers has to come from ‘proj-prod’. Hence we deploy the production code from ‘proj-prod’.

From here on we have two tracks. Click on the image for bigger resolution.

Track 1 – ‘proj-dev’ :

1. May not be stable
2. All developers will have push access to this repository
3. Regular development continues on this repository
4. Any developer can pull, production fixes from ‘proj-prod’ or accept pull requests
5. Once all the features reach stable state and production ready, team marks it as v.x.x.x

Track 2 – ‘proj-prod’ :

1. is most stable
2. Direct commits to this repository are done only as part production fixes
3. All production fixes are sent as pull request to main ‘proj-dev’ repository
4. Any developer can pull ‘proj-prod’ into their repository
5. Any production ready code (v.x.x.x) on ‘proj-dev’ will be pulled into this repository. Production deployment can be done only from this repository.

This is what I follow as a team lead. It keeps the work-spaces separate on my developer’s machine. It also keeps repositories separate. I guess its easy to understand or I find it easy to explain it to my team. Do you think its easy to follow?

I will probably call it the dev/prod clone model :)