initial feedback?

[afeld]

This is my fourth or fifth pass implementing the functionality included in this gem... I first did it directly in an app, then in Capistrano, then in SSHKit, then finally (after taking the "don't push your pull request" advice to heart) as a standalone gem 😅

Backstory

The problem stemmed from wanting to open a Rails console on the server, without me (and all of my teammates) having to manually set up my SSH config. I created a Rake task to generate an SSH config via the AWS API, but figured "hey, there are a bunch of remote commands I want to be able to run... this sounds like a job for Capistrano."

I assumed this would be easy, buuuuut our deployment setup has the complication of a gateway/NAT/proxy/jump server (those are all synonyms, right?) in front of it. All of the examples I could find only handle the most basic of SSH connections:

• https://github.com/ydkn/capistrano-rails-console/blob/dbe6b8b2a4a9d3e06a8d356a0dde3076b2b125bc/lib/capistrano/rails/console/tasks/remote.cap#L16
• https://gist.github.com/toobulkeh/8214198#file-deploy-rb-L25
• http://www.pablocantero.com/blog/2014/06/16/opening-a-rails-console-with-capistrano-3/
• http://stackoverflow.com/a/18174136/358804
• https://gist.github.com/col/4560969#file-deploy-rb-L52

"Ok," I thought, "well maybe it's something I can easily initiate from SSHKit..." but apparently that's not the case. The capistrano/console approach of an endless loop around an execute didn't seem like it would work, either. It seemed that shelling out to ssh was the way to go, but I wanted a way to generate the command automatically from the Capistrano::Configuration::Server. That's where this gem came in.

Halp?

I would love feedback on the overall approach, code, documentation, etc. The gem is far from comprehensive (particularly in covering all possible ssh_options), but I'm logging issues as I go. My thinking is that SSHKit::Interactive can be integrated into other Capistrano plugins, using shared logic for generating the ssh command.

CCing people who I saw in various threads who may be interested (no particular order) – #sorrynotsorry for the spam 😉 Thanks!

/cc @leehambley @jgrevich @miry @ydkn @toobulkeh @phstc @Haihappen @chrisbloom7 @col @joost

[toobulkeh]

👍 I can dig it.

After a quick glance, I would see some good value in creating a few default aliases too -- as that's what I normally end up doing manually -- instead of a rake task recipe.

Might be a bit outside of scope of the core functionality that you're providing, but would, imo, take this from "that's nice" to "yes please"

hints:
https://github.com/lemieuxster/please/blob/master/please.rb

[afeld]

You mean bash aliases? Yeah, that seems outside of the scope, and if I understand correctly, you could get most of the same thing with Ruby:

SSHKit.config.backend = SSHKit::Interactive::Backend
hosts = %w{my.server.com}
bundle_exec = '/opt/rbenv/shims/bundle exec'

on hosts do |host|
  execute("#{bundle_exec} rails console")
end

on hosts do |host|
  execute("#{bundle_exec} rails server")
end

For anything more repeatable, using the SSHKit execute and capture commands with the normal backend seem like the way to go. Happy to continue the conversation in a separate issue, though.

[miry]

@afeld you did same that I last year 👍

Also I added option :backend to actions: https://github.com/miry/sshkit/commit/24aa4c5628bb48edbd801d6ed37241c27a32dfdd

[miry]

@afeld this is my solution:

https://github.com/jetthoughts/j-cap-recipes/blob/master/lib/j-cap-recipes/sshkit_runner_patch.rb
https://github.com/jetthoughts/j-cap-recipes/blob/master/lib/sshkit/backends/ssh_command.rb
https://github.com/jetthoughts/j-cap-recipes/blob/master/lib/j-cap-recipes/tasks/rails.rake#L15

[afeld]

Also I added option :backend to actions

Lol after trying your Capistrano task, I spent waaay too long trying to figure out why I couldn't find that option defined in SSHKit 😆 I'm trying to avoid any mokeypatching in this gem, if possible, and setting the backend in a separate line isn't that big of a deal to me.