ssync

ssync

Source sync helps you to do recurring copies of a directory to a remote host.

Typical use case is this:

You are working on project on personal computer.

• you modify some files locally.
• you want to send the current sources to a remote host (that may be on a cloud or in a protected network) for testing (compilation, execution in a specific environment that you can't have locally).

and you repeat this loop during your work.

In the essence, it is just a wrapper around rsync.

Prerequisites

• rsync command-line tool.

Installation

Go to the Releases page on the GitHub project and download the tarball for your platform.

For example, for macOS (Darwin):

ssync_x.x.x_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz

Unpack it:

tar -xvf ssync_x.x.x_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz

Copy the ssync executable somewhere in your $PATH. For example:

$HOME/bin

If it is not in your $PATH, add it to your ~/.bash_profile (macOS), ~/.bashrc (linux) or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin"

Reload your shell:

# If you use bash
source ~/.bash_profile  # on macOS
source ~/.bashrc  # on linux

# If you use zsh
source ~/.zshrc

User guide

Adhoc copy

You can run an adhoc copy to a remote server without any prior initialization:

ssync myserver.example.com:/dest/path

You will see the executed rsync command:

Running: rsync -avzP --exclude .idea --exclude .vscode --exclude .terraform --exclude terraform.tfstate --exclude *.tfstate.backup --exclude *.py[co] --exclude __pycache__ --exclude foo /my/current/working/foodir myserver.example.com:/dest/path

And on the remote server, you will have this directory:

myserver.example.com:/dest/path/foodir

The --exclude files come from your user configuration file (see User configuration file).

With project initialization

If you plan to copy several times the same directory, you should initialize the directory you want to copy. We call it the project directory.

To initialize a project directory:

# creates ".ssync" file in the current directory
ssync -init

# or creates "another/directory/.ssync" file
ssync -init another/directory

Here is the content of the .ssync:

nodes:
- server:/path
excludes:
- .idea
- .vscode
- .terraform
- terraform.tfstate
- '*.tfstate.backup'
- '*.py[co]'
- __pycache__
delete: true
sudo-user: ""
extra-args: []

• nodes: the list of target nodes to copy to. The format is the same as the rsync's one, ie SERVER:[remote/path] (requires the :).
• excludes: the list of excluded files.
• delete: delete extraneous files from destination dirs.
• sudo-user: destination user ownership. If you want to copy the destination files under another username (you must be able to sudo su as this destination user). Typical use case is when you copy files to a remote server in a directory owned by another user (eg: jenkins or root).
• extra-args: extra arguments to pass to rsync.

Customize the nodes, and copy the project directory to the remote nodes:

ssync

You can call ssync from any subdirectory of the project directory.

For example:

• your project directory is /my/project
• your current working directory is /my/project/lib/foo

If you run ssync from the directory /my/project/lib/foo, ssync will search for a .ssync in this order:

• /my/project/lib/foo/.ssync
• /my/project/lib/.ssync
• /my/project/.ssync
• /my/.ssync
• /.ssync

If no project directory is found, it will assume that this is an adhoc call.

Pass arbitrary arguments to rsync directly

You can pass arbitrary arguments to rsync directly after the -- argument.

For example:

ssync -n -- -q --exclude-from=my_excludes

• -n is evaluated by ssync as dry-run flag.
• -q --exclude-from=my_excludes is passed as is to rsync.

You can also add these arbitrary arguments in the .ssync file like so:

extra-args:
- -n
- -q
- --exclude-from=my_excludes

or this to forward your ssh-agent keys:

extra-args:
- -e
- ssh -A

User configuration file

ssync will create a user configuration file ~/.config/ssync/config.yaml on the first run that is different from -help.

Here is an example:

excludes:
- .idea
- .vscode
- .terraform
- terraform.tfstate
- '*.tfstate.backup'
- '*.py[co]'
- __pycache__

• excludes: file patterns that will be excluded from the rsync copy. This excludes list is used:
  • for adhoc copies (without any project initialization).
  • for project initialization (ssync -init).

Troubleshooting

If you are facing any issue or have a suggestion, please feel free to file an issue on the Issues page of the project.

Developer guide

Requirements

• Go 1.16+
• GoReleaser (https://github.com/goreleaser/goreleaser)

Run locally

go run .

Install locally

# build and copy the binary to your $GOPATH/bin
go install

How to make a release

Install GoReleaser

brew install goreleaser

Generate a GitHub token

GoReleaser needs a new GitHub token to make a release in your repository and upload the artifacts:

• Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
• Select the repo scope.
• Click on Generate token.

With make-release.sh

./make-release.sh

Manual release

Export your GITHUB_TOKEN:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="YOUR_GH_TOKEN"

Test the GoRelease configuration:

goreleaser --snapshot --skip-publish --clean

Make the real release:

# Make sure you pushed everything to the remote
git push

# Create a tag and push it to GitHub
git tag -a v0.1.0 -m "Release v0.1.0"
git push origin v0.1.0

# Check the GoRelease locally
goreleaser --skip-publish --clean

# If all good, do the real release
goreleaser --clean