7 ms·

Show HN: Shipit, pure JavaScript deployment tool used by Ghost blogging platform

81 points by neoziro 12y ago

tmikaeld 12y ago
Sweet, i may actually use it, more documentation would be nice though.
- neoziro 12y ago
  If you need more documentation about deploying using Shipit, you can find it in the deploy set of tasks: https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit-deploy https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit-deploy
marmoto 12y ago
My childish brain pulled a full-Freudian with that name. Might want to capitalize the I maybe?
- xchaotic 12y ago
  I shipmy pants
- stevekemp 12y ago
  My first thought was related to the name too - it's an unfortunate collision with Brad Fitzpatricks' shipit: http://search.cpan.org/dist/ShipIt/ http://search.cpan.org/dist/ShipIt/
  - baudehlo 12y ago
    It's clearly a port of Brad's ShipIt from Perl to JS
    - neoziro 12y ago
      I don't know Brad's Shipit, so it's not a port but it is possible that it's the same thing.
pmp0x 12y ago
Looks very similar to: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flightplan https://www.npmjs.com/package/flightplan
- neoziro 12y ago
  Yes, it looks like, I didn't know this project.
  - pmp0x 12y ago
    But ShipIt seems to be more modular and event driven while flightplan is just a rundown of various commands...
- andrewchilds 12y ago
  You might also be interested in Overcast (I'm the author): https://www.npmjs.com/package/overcast https://www.npmjs.com/package/overcast
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- neoziro 12y ago
  Shipit is an automation and deployment tool, git hook is just a hook on a git command. You can't run a command on 10 servers in parallel using git hook post-receive.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    technically, a hook shell script could start 10 background commands, or start 10 commands using GNU Parallel. This obsession with using a single language for everything is ridiculous and needs to end.
ojanik 12y ago
Why Javascript?
- Kudos 12y ago
  > Shipit was built to be a Capistrano alternative for people who don't know ruby, or who experienced some issues with it. If you want to write tasks in JavaScript and enjoy the node ecosystem, Shipit is also for you.
roelvanhintum 12y ago
Nice, i prefer node over ruby, so maybe i'll use this. For the same reason i prefer LESS over SASS (apart from the great performance improvement).
- neoziro 12y ago
  For Less and Sass, it's not very annoying because you don't have to write a lot of ruby code. But writting a complete deployment script if you don't know ruby is very hard... I love to be able to use my favorite JS modules in my deploy script, that's why I wrote Shipit.
  - roelvanhintum 12y ago
    That is one solid point. Thanks for helping all of us out!
- nailer 12y ago
  If you run `npm install -g sass` you'll get the native JS version of SASS.
  - roelvanhintum 12y ago
    Thanks, didn't know that. Right now i was using libsass for some projects. It compiles faster than the ruby sass.
  - joshcrowder 12y ago
    The problem is that native sass is not the same version as ruby sass its infuriating.
halfdan 12y ago
Where is Ghost using this tool?
- fredoliveira 12y ago
  I'd guess they use it on their hosted platform.
  - halfdan 12y ago
    Would be my guess too, but other than a single PR from one of the core devs I can't find any connection between the projects. Is there any source for this?
- neoziro 12y ago
  They used in to deploy projects internally, same for Le Monde. Shipit is not designed to Shipit projects over a lot of servers. It's designed to Shipit small projects or even to ship code on hardware (like raspberry).
frik 12y ago
Is ShipIt an Ansible replacement? The idea of Ansible is good, but I would like a JavaScript based tool and avoid Ruby. Edit: i meant Python
- mateuszf 12y ago
  Ansible is written in Python.
- treehau5 12y ago
  what about ruby makes you want to avoid it? strictly curious
  - frik 12y ago
    Sorry, I meant Python. I am familar with Algol syntax based languages and prefer C/C++/ObjectC/C#/Java/PHP/JS/Go/Rust/Lua/Basic/Pascal/Ada/Smalltalk/Scheme over Python/Ruby/Haskel.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      What does Algol syntax have to do with that? Several of the first set of languages you list are not Algol-based, while two of the last three are Algol-syntax-based.
- pyre 12y ago
  You can do most of your Ansible work without needing to touch Python. I'm a Python programmer, and I've never needed to touch Python (other than running Ansible, which is a Python program) with respect to an Ansible setup.
- neoziro 12y ago
  Shipit can be an Ansible replacement, but there is no command abstraction to Shipit. Shipit is designed to quickly deploy a project on a set of servers not to configure an entire server.
kh_hk 12y ago
I am starting to see the light on all this tooling madness. It does not matter: languages and their ecosystems are powerful enough for any project to build their own tools. Projects are fond of their tools, so they give them fancy names and logos, and release them in hopes they are useful to somebody.
- neoziro 12y ago
  When will you release a deployment tool in Haxe?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
jzig 12y ago
How is this different from Grunt or Gulp? Is it used with or in place of? After reading the docs I'm not sure I see the difference or the value add.
- neoziro 12y ago
  Shipit can run local and SSH commands easily on a group of servers, there is also a set of tasks ready for deployment.
- neoziro 12y ago
  Try deploying just with grunt and you will see the difference.
  - thoughtpalette 12y ago
    The grunt-aws module makes deploying to S3 and cloudfront a breeze. We switched to this for all our FE devs awhile ago and it's been painless. https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-aws https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-aws
- nailer 12y ago
  It leverages 'orchestrate' (which is what gulp uses) to do deploys across a variety of hosts, keeping the old versions around should you need to switch back easily.
  - jzig 12y ago
    But why wouldn't I just use Gulp then?
    - nailer 12y ago
      gulp doesn't define groups of servers, or connect to them over encrypted sockets. This does. FYI the authors (which I'm not) seem to be gulp fans too, and want to leverage as much as they can.
rizalp 12y ago
What's the difference between build tool, like gulp and deployment tool like Shipit?
- neoziro 12y ago
  Shipit can run local and SSH commands easily on a group of servers, there is also a set of tasks ready for deployment.
  - s_kilk 12y ago
    So it's like a javascript version of fabric?
pstadler 12y ago
Glad to see some more effort going into deployment tooling. I think the main goal of reinventing such tools in different languages is to get rid of the need of having dependencies outside of the current project's platform, which makes sense, for me at least. Shameless plug: I'm the author of Flightplan[1], a library which provides a simple, yet powerful interface to execute sequences of shell commands on local and remote host(s). [1] https://github.com/pstadler/flightplan https://github.com/pstadler/flightplan
- Dasuchin 12y ago
  I'm a huge fan of Flightplan. I used it extensively at a past job and added it into our default stack. Every site we worked with (60+ at the time I left) was using Flightplan for deployment.
astrojams 12y ago
It would be cool to see a tutorial on configuring Shipit to do Ghost deployments.

81 points by neoziro 12y ago

tmikaeld 12y ago

Sweet, i may actually use it, more documentation would be nice though.

neoziro 12y ago
If you need more documentation about deploying using Shipit, you can find it in the deploy set of tasks: https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit-deploy https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit-deploy

marmoto 12y ago

My childish brain pulled a full-Freudian with that name. Might want to capitalize the I maybe?

xchaotic 12y ago
I shipmy pants
stevekemp 12y ago
My first thought was related to the name too - it's an unfortunate collision with Brad Fitzpatricks' shipit: http://search.cpan.org/dist/ShipIt/ http://search.cpan.org/dist/ShipIt/
- baudehlo 12y ago
  It's clearly a port of Brad's ShipIt from Perl to JS
  - neoziro 12y ago
    I don't know Brad's Shipit, so it's not a port but it is possible that it's the same thing.

pmp0x 12y ago

Looks very similar to: https://www.npmjs.com/package/flightplan https://www.npmjs.com/package/flightplan

neoziro 12y ago
Yes, it looks like, I didn't know this project.
- pmp0x 12y ago
  But ShipIt seems to be more modular and event driven while flightplan is just a rundown of various commands...
andrewchilds 12y ago
You might also be interested in Overcast (I'm the author): https://www.npmjs.com/package/overcast https://www.npmjs.com/package/overcast

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

neoziro 12y ago
Shipit is an automation and deployment tool, git hook is just a hook on a git command. You can't run a command on 10 servers in parallel using git hook post-receive.
- stephenr 12y ago
  technically, a hook shell script could start 10 background commands, or start 10 commands using GNU Parallel. This obsession with using a single language for everything is ridiculous and needs to end.

ojanik 12y ago

Why Javascript?

Kudos 12y ago
> Shipit was built to be a Capistrano alternative for people who don't know ruby, or who experienced some issues with it. If you want to write tasks in JavaScript and enjoy the node ecosystem, Shipit is also for you.

roelvanhintum 12y ago

Nice, i prefer node over ruby, so maybe i'll use this. For the same reason i prefer LESS over SASS (apart from the great performance improvement).

neoziro 12y ago
For Less and Sass, it's not very annoying because you don't have to write a lot of ruby code. But writting a complete deployment script if you don't know ruby is very hard... I love to be able to use my favorite JS modules in my deploy script, that's why I wrote Shipit.
- roelvanhintum 12y ago
  That is one solid point. Thanks for helping all of us out!
nailer 12y ago
If you run `npm install -g sass` you'll get the native JS version of SASS.
- roelvanhintum 12y ago
  Thanks, didn't know that. Right now i was using libsass for some projects. It compiles faster than the ruby sass.
- joshcrowder 12y ago
  The problem is that native sass is not the same version as ruby sass its infuriating.

halfdan 12y ago

Where is Ghost using this tool?

fredoliveira 12y ago
I'd guess they use it on their hosted platform.
- halfdan 12y ago
  Would be my guess too, but other than a single PR from one of the core devs I can't find any connection between the projects. Is there any source for this?
neoziro 12y ago
They used in to deploy projects internally, same for Le Monde. Shipit is not designed to Shipit projects over a lot of servers. It's designed to Shipit small projects or even to ship code on hardware (like raspberry).

frik 12y ago

Is ShipIt an Ansible replacement? The idea of Ansible is good, but I would like a JavaScript based tool and avoid Ruby. Edit: i meant Python

mateuszf 12y ago
Ansible is written in Python.
treehau5 12y ago
what about ruby makes you want to avoid it? strictly curious
- frik 12y ago
  Sorry, I meant Python. I am familar with Algol syntax based languages and prefer C/C++/ObjectC/C#/Java/PHP/JS/Go/Rust/Lua/Basic/Pascal/Ada/Smalltalk/Scheme over Python/Ruby/Haskel.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    What does Algol syntax have to do with that? Several of the first set of languages you list are not Algol-based, while two of the last three are Algol-syntax-based.
pyre 12y ago
You can do most of your Ansible work without needing to touch Python. I'm a Python programmer, and I've never needed to touch Python (other than running Ansible, which is a Python program) with respect to an Ansible setup.
neoziro 12y ago
Shipit can be an Ansible replacement, but there is no command abstraction to Shipit. Shipit is designed to quickly deploy a project on a set of servers not to configure an entire server.

kh_hk 12y ago

I am starting to see the light on all this tooling madness. It does not matter: languages and their ecosystems are powerful enough for any project to build their own tools. Projects are fond of their tools, so they give them fancy names and logos, and release them in hopes they are useful to somebody.

neoziro 12y ago
When will you release a deployment tool in Haxe?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

jzig 12y ago

How is this different from Grunt or Gulp? Is it used with or in place of? After reading the docs I'm not sure I see the difference or the value add.

neoziro 12y ago
Shipit can run local and SSH commands easily on a group of servers, there is also a set of tasks ready for deployment.
neoziro 12y ago
Try deploying just with grunt and you will see the difference.
- thoughtpalette 12y ago
  The grunt-aws module makes deploying to S3 and cloudfront a breeze. We switched to this for all our FE devs awhile ago and it's been painless. https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-aws https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-aws
nailer 12y ago
It leverages 'orchestrate' (which is what gulp uses) to do deploys across a variety of hosts, keeping the old versions around should you need to switch back easily.
- jzig 12y ago
  But why wouldn't I just use Gulp then?
  - nailer 12y ago
    gulp doesn't define groups of servers, or connect to them over encrypted sockets. This does. FYI the authors (which I'm not) seem to be gulp fans too, and want to leverage as much as they can.

rizalp 12y ago

What's the difference between build tool, like gulp and deployment tool like Shipit?

neoziro 12y ago
Shipit can run local and SSH commands easily on a group of servers, there is also a set of tasks ready for deployment.
- s_kilk 12y ago
  So it's like a javascript version of fabric?

pstadler 12y ago

Glad to see some more effort going into deployment tooling. I think the main goal of reinventing such tools in different languages is to get rid of the need of having dependencies outside of the current project's platform, which makes sense, for me at least. Shameless plug: I'm the author of Flightplan[1], a library which provides a simple, yet powerful interface to execute sequences of shell commands on local and remote host(s). [1] https://github.com/pstadler/flightplan https://github.com/pstadler/flightplan

Dasuchin 12y ago
I'm a huge fan of Flightplan. I used it extensively at a past job and added it into our default stack. Every site we worked with (60+ at the time I left) was using Flightplan for deployment.

astrojams 12y ago

It would be cool to see a tutorial on configuring Shipit to do Ghost deployments.