I’d like to take the example of svn externals from my previous post a bit further. I created a bash script that captures a group of commands that one would need to deploy a vanilla WordPress website with a cherry picking of plugins and themes. This script is a big-ass time saver. It’s especially useful for deployment of websites based on a package like WordPress or Drupal, that host publicly available subversion repositories. I tested it recently and made two websites spending two hours on each site, four hours total.

Web developers as they learn start by downloading packages in zip and tar.gz archives which is fine. A pro technique is to pull in the resource via SubVersion (svn). Svn provides additional features such as svn externals and svn hooks. Svn externals allows for the pulling in of external resources into a defined project in a svn repository. Svn hooks is for additional labor saving scripting that allows for the automation of repeated tasks such as a script that can pass along data from commit messages into other resources in the project such as the bug tracker. Learning these tricks allows for labor savings at every step in the production cycle. We can take these practices to the next level with capturing the commands in a bash script and then organise all the features of a website in a deployment script, something that is done all the time at software majors.

This script is a big-ass time saver.

I took the time to sort this out recently because I had some web development requests from people who have simple websites that could be converted to WordPress easily enough, but I wasn’t interested in going fishing for plugins and themes twice, and again when the next people come along needing the same thing. The job of a software developer should be to automate processes. I say often that the credo of developers is not to work for a living, but to eliminate work. But this idea is not always employed by developers in all the places it could, and its sometimes even a harder to get a client on board to make full use of methods and procedures that automate tasks and eliminate work.

…the credo of (software) developers is not to work for a living, but to eliminate work.

Lets at least cover the benefits in point form:

• The script takes a couple of minutes and you save hours.
• You dont repeat the labor, but you can repeat the use of the script, deploying anywhere else.
• All your stuff is there at the beginning. Useful for planning, development, and policy across teams.
• You are organised, and you can develop variations. Svn export may be good enough for your needs.

In pseudo code, here is what your script will do:

• Set up your repository.
• Make your directory structure for your project.
• Check out your repository.
• Run procedures for svn externals for core WordPress.
• Run procedures for svn externals for plugins, iterating through data in an external file resource.
• Run procedures for svn externals for themes, iterating through data in an external file resource.
• Grab additional resources in an array, iterate through them using wget command, extract them.
• Cleanup.
• Commit message.
• … anything else you can think to do.

The bash file, save as getallwpsvn.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# run this script with chmod 755 permissions.

workPath=$(pwd)

rm -rf filerepository repository www *.zip # this line cleans dir for testing, comment out when done

svnadmin create repository

mkdir -p filerepository/{branches,tags,trunk/{html,db,cron,scripts,themes,plugins,project,selenium}}
# got anything to import into those directories under trunk?
# import into the directories under trunk now
# before the next step
svn import filerepository file://$workPath/repository -m "initial import using getallwpsvn.sh script"
rm -rf filerepository
svn checkout file://$workPath/repository/trunk www
cd www
svn rm html
svn commit -m "rm html temporarily for clean propset"
svn propset svn:externals 'html http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/' .
svn up
cd html/wp-content/
# get plugins from repository http://svn.wp-plugins.org/
# plugins listed in svn.plugins.externals
svn propset svn:externals -F ../../../svn.plugins.externals plugins/
#svn commit "plugins propset" # no commit if no local repository
svn up
# themes repository: http://svn.wp-themes.org/
# themes repository is a bit of a ghost town, none grabbed here
# browse the site and get the zip
# themes listed in svn.themes.externals file, if there are any
svn propset svn:externals -F svn.themes.externals plugins/
svn up

cd themes
# load up on themes
#more human readable format for array

THEMESITES[0]=http://dev.digitalnature.ro/fusion/fusion-wordpress.zip
THEMESITES[1]=http://ericulous.com/?load=googlechrome.zip
THEMESITES[2]=http://ericulous.com/?load=internetcenter.zip
THEMESITES[3]=http://ericulous.com/?load=redbusiness.zip
THEMESITES[4]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/elegant-box.4.1.1.zip
THEMESITES[5]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thirtyseventyeight.4.0.zip
THEMESITES[6]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thirtyseventyeight.4.0.zip
THEMESITES[7]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/constructor.0.6.4.zip
THEMESITES[8]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/jq.2.4.zip
THEMESITES[9]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/ahimsa.3.0.zip
THEMESITES[10]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/retromania.1.3.zip
THEMESITES[11]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/skinbu.1.0.3.zip
THEMESITES[12]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/mystique.1.16.zip
THEMESITES[13]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/lightword.1.9.3.zip
THEMESITES[14]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/monochrome.2.3.zip
THEMESITES[15]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thematic.0.9.5.1.zip
THEMESITES[16]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/hybrid.0.6.1.zip
THEMESITES[17]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/new-york.1.0.1.zip
THEMESITES[18]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/f8-lite.1.3.zip
THEMESITES[19]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/simplex.1.3.1.zip
THEMESITES[20]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/cleanr.0.1.2.zip

for s in ${THEMESITES[@]}
do wget "$s"
done

FILES="*.zip"
for f in "$FILES"
do unzip "$f"
done

rm *.zip
rm *.zip.*
cd ../../../
svn commit -m "load in of plugins and themes complete"

cd $workPath
cp $workPath/www/html/wp-config-sample.php  $workPath/www/html/wp-config.php
chmod 777 $workPath/www/html/wp-config.php
chmod 777 $workPath/www/html/wp-content #temporarily, for cache
mkdir $workPath/www/html/wp-content/uploads && chmod 777 $_
touch $workPath/www/html/.htaccess && chmod 777 $_

# do any post processing, other importing now, and commit it if you did.

Set the file permission to chmod 755, and run it from the shell command line as in ./getallwpsvn.sh.

The file you save as svn.plugins.externals:

all-in-one-seo-pack http://svn.wp-plugins.org/all-in-one-seo-pack/trunk
advertising-manager http://svn.wp-plugins.org/advertising-manager/trunk
cforms http://svn.wp-plugins.org/cforms/trunk
google-sitemap-generator http://svn.wp-plugins.org/google-sitemap-generator/trunk
sociable http://svn.wp-plugins.org/sociable/trunk
stats  http://svn.wp-plugins.org/stats/trunk
ultimate-google-analytics http://svn.wp-plugins.org/ultimate-google-analytics/trunk
vipers-video-quicktags http://svn.wp-plugins.org/vipers-video-quicktags/trunk
wordbook http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wordbook/trunk
wp-flickr http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-flickr/trunk
wp-super-cache http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk

The svn.plugins.externals file is a name – resource listing, one per line, when you have more than one resource to define with svn externals.

Please note that you may not need all of this; comment whatever out you want. You dont need to create a local repository, that is only if you are doing team development, or perhaps custom development on themes and plugins. I found though that it was necessary with svn propset directives to create a top-level directory structure wherein is stored all the different directories. The point of this exercise is a pull-in of public resources in a step that you can repeat automatically over and over. It also need not be a very sophisticated script to get the benefits from it.