Re: software distribution with subversion
Guten Tag Jason Keltz, am Donnerstag, 31. Januar 2013 um 23:10 schrieben Sie: Any ideas that anyone might be able to offer? As it seems most answers vote against using Subversion and use rsync or some alternative instead, I would like to add some ideas which vote for Subversion because I use a similar approach like yours with one of our products some of my customers. It's not about 60 GB of data, though, only around 75 MB per client, but each client needs some little customizations, for example. In my environment my customers use SSH to establish a tunnel to access a special svnserve instance only serving binary data which can directly be used without installation or else. It's just a simple directory structure which is in most cases saved on a file server of a customer and used by it's own clients from there. I found this to work quite well as it's an easy and flexible setup. Some of my customers use this access to get the data and build customized MSI installation packets for Windows on their own. 1. rsync files to deployment server Besides the reasons not running svnserve on the file server itself, why don't you seem to consider running the working copy for your trunk or whatever will be the source for your deployment server on the file server? This would need more space on the file server, of course, but it would save you the rsync to the deployment server and the working copy on the deployment server. How are changes to the directory structure on the file server applied at all? If it is from users, they could already use Subversion clients to apply those changes and could deal with moves, renames, deletes etc. in the proper Subversion way which would provide full tracking and history of the changes. 2. repo size Depending on your data, Subversions representation sharing of content could save you a lot of repo space. While the clients still had to deal with pristine copies etc., the needed space for your deployment server may be a lot less than your mentioned 60 GB. Another good thing on representation sharing is that it works on a per repo basis, not e.g. per directory, which means that even if you branch a lot of clients for any reason and each client needs to get updated binaries the total amount of space needed won't scale with the number of clients branched, but only with the different binary changes committed, which could be a lot less in an environment were all clients need to have the same binaries. 3. customizations for some clients You descriptions reads like each and every client has exactly the same data set to fetch. What's the chance for exceptions and that some clients need special binaries, configuration files or whatever for some reasons? With a simple rsync approach this would really complicate your setup as you would need another directory structure with full data or need to symlink some parts of your directory structure or whatever. Using subversion you could easily, fast and efficient branch the clients which need customizations and if you use working copies on the file server your users could easily apply those customizations and see which customizations are made. This would make your maintenance life much easier than generating a diff between do directory structures which are used as a rsync basis. 4. updates by revision Depending on the size of your changes, I agree that using Subversion for updates will be much more efficient than running rsync and letting it calculate the needed changes. It's not a matter of if rsync will be slower but only how slow it will perform and if this would be a real problem in environment or not. But from my point of view it a simple space vs. processing time if you look at Subversion vs. rsync. 5. pristine space needed on clients You didn't seem to mention what kind of clients you need to update. Depending on their kind the doubled space for pristine copies may not even be a problem at all. 6. Server access and security Did you already think of security, is there any need to secure clients against each other at all? Using rsync and especially customizatioins you would maybe need to create a lot of users and or groups and use security on the file system and OS level. Subversion provides it's own configuration which may even be versioned itself for documentations purposes etc. Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Thorsten Schöning -- Thorsten Schöning E-Mail:thorsten.schoen...@am-soft.de AM-SoFT IT-Systeme http://www.AM-SoFT.de/ Telefon...05151- 9468- 55 Fax...05151- 9468- 88 Mobil..0178-8 9468- 04 AM-SoFT GmbH IT-Systeme, Brandenburger Str. 7c, 31789 Hameln AG Hannover HRB 207 694 - Geschäftsführer: Andreas Muchow
Re: software distribution with subversion
The OP isn't subscribed and so probably didn't see your reply. Branko Čibej wrote on Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 00:37:41 +0100: I expect you've considered this option, but just to add it to the list:
Re: software distribution with subversion
Thanks to everyone who provided me with very helpful feedback re: my problem of software distribution with subversion. I am re-evaluating the project, and how to complete it best. Thanks! Jason.
RE: software distribution with subversion
I am faced with a problem where I need to distribute a directory containing about 60 GB worth of software on a Linux file server to about 100 systems. The software must be localized on those systems and not shared out over NFS. On a regular basis, software may be added or removed from the directory, and all the clients should update accordingly in the evening. During the update period, some client systems may be off. I think that Subversion would be a reasonable way to solve this problem which isn't quite the type of problem that rsync is intended to handle (because of the number of machines). However, for a variety of reasons, I don't want to run subversion on the actual file server. Instead, nightly, I'd like to rsync changes in the contents of the software directory on the file server to a software distribution server which would run its own svnserve. The clients would then connect up to the server nightly, and update themselves accordingly. Because of the versioning, if a client misses an update, it would be updated the next time around, even if its been off for a while. The inital update between the file server and the software update server would require rsyncing the whole 60 GB of software to a working directory, after which, to make subversion see this as a working directory, I would have to commit the entire directory, then check it back out. This process seems like a bit of a waste, but it's a one time process, and I don't really see any way around it. In the future, I would like to be able to rsync changes between the file server and the working directory on the software distribution server, which would including using --delete to ensure that software deleted from the file server is also deleted from the subversion working idrectory, and including the excluding of the .svn directory from the working copy. However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update isn't going to delete directories from the repository that were deleted from the working directory. I believe you need to use svn delete for this? Any ideas that anyone might be able to offer? I'm not on the list, so please ensure that you CC: me in any response. Thanks for your help! What you need to do could work. I assume this software in order to run can build built or whatever during your nightly update on each client? You keep saying rsyncing ... you wouldn't use that. You wouldn't use that of course, you would use the svn client binary. For you initial load... if the software is on the server where you will house your repository you can just import the data into the repository from that file... there is no need to send the data twice. In other words, you can have both a working copy and a repository on your central server. However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update svn update brings any changes in the repository to your working copy. svn commit does the opposite... it puts any changes in a working directory into the repository. Hth... That said, if this is actual software, wouldn't using one of the many package management tools available in Linux be a better fit? BOb
Re: software distribution with subversion
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 4:10 PM, Jason Keltz j...@cse.yorku.ca wrote: I am faced with a problem where I need to distribute a directory containing about 60 GB worth of software on a Linux file server to about 100 systems. The software must be localized on those systems and not shared out over NFS. On a regular basis, software may be added or removed from the directory, and all the clients should update accordingly in the evening. During the update period, some client systems may be off. I think that Subversion would be a reasonable way to solve this problem which isn't quite the type of problem that rsync is intended to handle (because of the number of machines). I'd think it is exactly the problem that rsync is intended to handle. However, for a variety of reasons, I don't want to run subversion on the actual file server. Instead, nightly, I'd like to rsync changes in the contents of the software directory on the file server to a software distribution server which would run its own svnserve. The clients would then connect up to the server nightly, and update themselves accordingly. Because of the versioning, if a client misses an update, it would be updated the next time around, even if its been off for a while. Subversion would give you the option of intentionally maintaining your targets at different revision levels, but at a cost of needing a 'working copy' format where you have an unneeded 'pristine' duplicate copy of everything. However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update isn't going to delete directories from the repository that were deleted from the working directory. Sure it will - it will make it match the state of whatever version you are updating to. I believe you need to use svn delete for this? That is for when you are making the changes you intend to commit. -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com
Re: software distribution with subversion
On 31/01/2013 6:06 PM, Bob Archer wrote: I am faced with a problem where I need to distribute a directory containing about 60 GB worth of software on a Linux file server to about 100 systems. The software must be localized on those systems and not shared out over NFS. On a regular basis, software may be added or removed from the directory, and all the clients should update accordingly in the evening. During the update period, some client systems may be off. I think that Subversion would be a reasonable way to solve this problem which isn't quite the type of problem that rsync is intended to handle (because of the number of machines). However, for a variety of reasons, I don't want to run subversion on the actual file server. Instead, nightly, I'd like to rsync changes in the contents of the software directory on the file server to a software distribution server which would run its own svnserve. The clients would then connect up to the server nightly, and update themselves accordingly. Because of the versioning, if a client misses an update, it would be updated the next time around, even if its been off for a while. The inital update between the file server and the software update server would require rsyncing the whole 60 GB of software to a working directory, after which, to make subversion see this as a working directory, I would have to commit the entire directory, then check it back out. This process seems like a bit of a waste, but it's a one time process, and I don't really see any way around it. In the future, I would like to be able to rsync changes between the file server and the working directory on the software distribution server, which would including using --delete to ensure that software deleted from the file server is also deleted from the subversion working idrectory, and including the excluding of the .svn directory from the working copy. However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update isn't going to delete directories from the repository that were deleted from the working directory. I believe you need to use svn delete for this? Any ideas that anyone might be able to offer? I'm not on the list, so please ensure that you CC: me in any response. Thanks for your help! What you need to do could work. I assume this software in order to run can build built or whatever during your nightly update on each client? You keep saying rsyncing ... you wouldn't use that. You wouldn't use that of course, you would use the svn client binary. Actually, maybe I wasn't clear.. The software includes various packages like say, Matlab, or Maple, or whatever else, already installed... imagine a directory on the fileserver.. say, /local/software which includes bin, lib, etc... I'm not installing the software. it's already been installed.. I'm just syncing a directory between machines.. As for rsyncing.. I would rsync the software from the file server to the software distribution server, and then use svn from there to check in all the changes. For you initial load... if the software is on the server where you will house your repository you can just import the data into the repository from that file... there is no need to send the data twice. In other words, you can have both a working copy and a repository on your central server. Yes. Initially I would do an import, but the problem is... the next day, the software gets updated on the real file server... say, new version of Matlab or something... in the evening, I want the process to run that would rsync the data (with all the changes) from the file server to the software distribution server, do something to commit the changes, then the 100 clients would eventually each svn update. However, to be able to commit the changes, I need to have a working copy on the software distribution server However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update svn update brings any changes in the repository to your working copy. svn commit does the opposite... it puts any changes in a working directory into the repository. See, this is where I'm confused... I created a few directories including bin and pkg for a test. All committed fine... erased them from the working copy, did a commit then a status and I see: ! bin ! pkg but when I go into a different directory and check out the current state.. Apkg Abin Checked out revision 2. they're still there... Hth... That said, if this is actual software, wouldn't using one of the many package management tools available in Linux be a better fit? The thing is, I'm moving around already installed software, and there's
Re: software distribution with subversion
On Jan 31, 2013, at 20:05, Jason Keltz wrote: On 31/01/2013 6:06 PM, Bob Archer wrote: What you need to do could work. I assume this software in order to run can build built or whatever during your nightly update on each client? You keep saying rsyncing ... you wouldn't use that. You wouldn't use that of course, you would use the svn client binary. Actually, maybe I wasn't clear.. The software includes various packages like say, Matlab, or Maple, or whatever else, already installed... imagine a directory on the fileserver.. say, /local/software which includes bin, lib, etc...I'm not installing the software. it's already been installed.. I'm just syncing a directory between machines.. As for rsyncing.. I would rsync the software from the file server to the software distribution server, and then use svn from there to check in all the changes. For you initial load... if the software is on the server where you will house your repository you can just import the data into the repository from that file... there is no need to send the data twice. In other words, you can have both a working copy and a repository on your central server. Yes. Initially I would do an import, but the problem is... the next day, the software gets updated on the real file server... say, new version of Matlab or something... in the evening, I want the process to run that would rsync the data (with all the changes) from the file server to the software distribution server, do something to commit the changes, then the 100 clients would eventually each svn update. However, to be able to commit the changes, I need to have a working copy on the software distribution server However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update svn update brings any changes in the repository to your working copy. svn commit does the opposite... it puts any changes in a working directory into the repository. See, this is where I'm confused... I created a few directories including bin and pkg for a test. All committed fine... erased them from the working copy, did a commit then a status and I see: ! bin ! pkg but when I go into a different directory and check out the current state.. Apkg Abin Checked out revision 2. they're still there... Correct. Subversion does not track your movements. You must tell Subversion what you are moving and deleting by doing the moves and deletes using svn mv and svn rm, not using regular OS commands. Hth... That said, if this is actual software, wouldn't using one of the many package management tools available in Linux be a better fit? The thing is, I'm moving around already installed software, and there's nothing that great, as far as I can see, for doing that. The twitter guys are using something they wrote called murder which uses torrent to do this kind of thing... excellent idea, but it uses Ruby and several other tools ... and I don't want to get into that at the moment... Subversion is not going to be a satisfactory solution for this use case. Besides all the issues you're describing with setting up the server-side infrastructure for this, and as was already mentioned, when you check out a working copy of this on your clients, there will be a duplicate pristine copy of everything. So if you have 60GB of software, it'll take up 120GB of space on the client machine. Subversion is not a software distribution tool; it is a document and revision management system. Use a different tool. As someone else said, rsync seems like a good tool for this job; I didn't understand why you think using rsync directly between your file server and your clients won't work.
Re: software distribution with subversion
On 31/01/2013 6:40 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 4:10 PM, Jason Keltz j...@cse.yorku.ca wrote: I am faced with a problem where I need to distribute a directory containing about 60 GB worth of software on a Linux file server to about 100 systems. The software must be localized on those systems and not shared out over NFS. On a regular basis, software may be added or removed from the directory, and all the clients should update accordingly in the evening. During the update period, some client systems may be off. I think that Subversion would be a reasonable way to solve this problem which isn't quite the type of problem that rsync is intended to handle (because of the number of machines). I'd think it is exactly the problem that rsync is intended to handle. rsync is great when you want to sync the contents from one machine to another machine in one direction.. (unison if you need dual direction sync...) I thought about using rsync to solve this problem... two ways I can think of.. 1) All the machines run rsync against the server.. kills the server, but let's say they do it all at different times.. the server is hefty.. hey, it would work, but for every single rsync, the server needs to look at its entire file tree to see which files have changed 100 syncs = 100 times processing the same thing over and over again... If only rsync would let me save that state to a file so that it doesn't need to reload it every time it runs, then I know which solution I'd be using... other problem is, it would take a long time.. 2) log/tree approach --- server updates one client, then the server and the one client each update another client, then each of those 3 update another... much faster, but again, you have to read the server state each and every time... and then I have to deal with the fact that various random machines are off ... It's a really interesting problem.. However, for a variety of reasons, I don't want to run subversion on the actual file server. Instead, nightly, I'd like to rsync changes in the contents of the software directory on the file server to a software distribution server which would run its own svnserve. The clients would then connect up to the server nightly, and update themselves accordingly. Because of the versioning, if a client misses an update, it would be updated the next time around, even if its been off for a while. Subversion would give you the option of intentionally maintaining your targets at different revision levels, but at a cost of needing a 'working copy' format where you have an unneeded 'pristine' duplicate copy of everything. The truth is, I wouldn't intentionally have the machines at different software levels... (well, that could be useful for testing, but that's another story) but a machine could be off during the update and would be able to catch up no longer how long it was off... However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update isn't going to delete directories from the repository that were deleted from the working directory. Sure it will - it will make it match the state of whatever version you are updating to. I believe you need to use svn delete for this? That is for when you are making the changes you intend to commit. I'll have to try that again .. didn't seem to be working the way I expected it to... Jason. -- Jason Keltz Manager of Development Department of Computer Science and Engineering York University, Toronto, Canada Tel: 416-736-2100 x. 33570 Fax: 416-736-5872
Re: software distribution with subversion
On 31/01/2013 9:13 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote: On Jan 31, 2013, at 20:05, Jason Keltz wrote: On 31/01/2013 6:06 PM, Bob Archer wrote: What you need to do could work. I assume this software in order to run can build built or whatever during your nightly update on each client? You keep saying rsyncing ... you wouldn't use that. You wouldn't use that of course, you would use the svn client binary. Actually, maybe I wasn't clear.. The software includes various packages like say, Matlab, or Maple, or whatever else, already installed... imagine a directory on the fileserver.. say, /local/software which includes bin, lib, etc...I'm not installing the software. it's already been installed.. I'm just syncing a directory between machines.. As for rsyncing.. I would rsync the software from the file server to the software distribution server, and then use svn from there to check in all the changes. For you initial load... if the software is on the server where you will house your repository you can just import the data into the repository from that file... there is no need to send the data twice. In other words, you can have both a working copy and a repository on your central server. Yes. Initially I would do an import, but the problem is... the next day, the software gets updated on the real file server... say, new version of Matlab or something... in the evening, I want the process to run that would rsync the data (with all the changes) from the file server to the software distribution server, do something to commit the changes, then the 100 clients would eventually each svn update. However, to be able to commit the changes, I need to have a working copy on the software distribution server However, after the rsync happens, I now need to run a command that would update the repository with the state of the working directory. However, it's not exactly clear how this would work? Running an svn update svn update brings any changes in the repository to your working copy. svn commit does the opposite... it puts any changes in a working directory into the repository. See, this is where I'm confused... I created a few directories including bin and pkg for a test. All committed fine... erased them from the working copy, did a commit then a status and I see: ! bin ! pkg but when I go into a different directory and check out the current state.. Apkg Abin Checked out revision 2. they're still there... Correct. Subversion does not track your movements. You must tell Subversion what you are moving and deleting by doing the moves and deletes using svn mv and svn rm, not using regular OS commands. Hth... That said, if this is actual software, wouldn't using one of the many package management tools available in Linux be a better fit? The thing is, I'm moving around already installed software, and there's nothing that great, as far as I can see, for doing that. The twitter guys are using something they wrote called murder which uses torrent to do this kind of thing... excellent idea, but it uses Ruby and several other tools ... and I don't want to get into that at the moment... Subversion is not going to be a satisfactory solution for this use case. Besides all the issues you're describing with setting up the server-side infrastructure for this, and as was already mentioned, when you check out a working copy of this on your clients, there will be a duplicate pristine copy of everything. So if you have 60GB of software, it'll take up 120GB of space on the client machine. I'm glad you brought that up :) Subversion is not a software distribution tool; it is a document and revision management system. Use a different tool. As someone else said, rsync seems like a good tool for this job; I didn't understand why you think using rsync directly between your file server and your clients won't work. See my email to Les... If only the rsync server could save a copy of the file checksums when it runs, it would probably decrease the sync time by half and save a whole lot of disk activity... -- Jason Keltz Manager of Development Department of Computer Science and Engineering York University, Toronto, Canada Tel: 416-736-2100 x. 33570 Fax: 416-736-5872
Re: software distribution with subversion
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:18 PM, Jason Keltz j...@cse.yorku.ca wrote: On 31/01/2013 9:13 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote: Subversion is not a software distribution tool; it is a document and revision management system. Use a different tool. As someone else said, rsync seems like a good tool for this job; I didn't understand why you think using rsync directly between your file server and your clients won't work. See my email to Les... If only the rsync server could save a copy of the file checksums when it runs, it would probably decrease the sync time by half and save a whole lot of disk activity... This sounds like somone wants to use the same screwdriver for all screws in this birdhouse. It's theoretically possible to set a canonical Subversion and auto-propagate changes to it, from the file server or from the an rsynced copy of the fileserver with a local working copy on the Subversion master. But it's going to be bulky, and slow. If that 60 GBytes has a lot of churn due to rapidly changing binaries or extensive static database files, it's going to get awkward indeed. And because the file server you're propagating these changes from is neither a Subversion server, nor a Subversion client, it's much harder. Moreover, this doesn't seem to be the kind of rollback the changes to a well-defined date that Subversion does so well,a nd the changes from the master get fed to a trunk and will then have to be propagated to branches., and each machine will need a different branch. This gets tricky. One can differentiate among the slightly different environments by maintaining a trunk and merging the changes to the branches, but that can get awkward. Is it possible to set up tags that haven svn:external settings that point to sets of software from the master, and then the individual hosts are configured locally and have their changes propagated to the branches on the master? And you know, this sounds like an absolute flipping deployment disaster I dealt with about 12 years ago. The site architect thought the clever thing to do was make a complete tarball bundle for all deployments, and the whole compressed tarball had to be pushed *every time*, and releases could only happen with the complete tarball. Various forms of chaos ensued. I taught them to use packages, to deploy kernels, in particular, as a separate object so they could be deployed separately and with rollback separate from the rest of the system. This fixed the ongoing problem that any one component that failed would stop the *whole* deployment and push back even the smallest fixes for as much as six months. So while I've offered some hints, I'm gong to really suggest to Jason that he think hard about modularizing the components of this set of packages before he even starts this project.
Re: software distribution with subversion
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 8:14 PM, Jason Keltz j...@cse.yorku.ca wrote: I'd think it is exactly the problem that rsync is intended to handle. rsync is great when you want to sync the contents from one machine to another machine in one direction.. (unison if you need dual direction sync...) I thought about using rsync to solve this problem... two ways I can think of.. 1) All the machines run rsync against the server.. kills the server, but let's say they do it all at different times.. the server is hefty.. hey, it would work, but for every single rsync, the server needs to look at its entire file tree to see which files have changed 100 syncs = 100 times processing the same thing over and over again... If only rsync would let me save that state to a file so that it doesn't need to reload it every time it runs, then I know which solution I'd be using... other problem is, it would take a long time.. Is this on linux? If the host has a reasonable amount of RAM the directory info will mostly be cached between accesses. Have you timed it before deciding it is a problem? I suspect it won't be unless there are millions of small files in that tree or a very fast rate of change. 2) log/tree approach --- server updates one client, then the server and the one client each update another client, then each of those 3 update another... much faster, but again, you have to read the server state each and every time... and then I have to deal with the fact that various random machines are off ... If you can't complete from one distribution server - or if the geographic location makes sense, fan it out to a few redistribution instances. Not sure what you mean about reading server state - directory reads aren't all that expensive. Subversion would give you the option of intentionally maintaining your targets at different revision levels, but at a cost of needing a 'working copy' format where you have an unneeded 'pristine' duplicate copy of everything. The truth is, I wouldn't intentionally have the machines at different software levels... (well, that could be useful for testing, but that's another story) but a machine could be off during the update and would be able to catch up no longer how long it was off... Rsync would always catch up. If the exact refresh timing isn't critical you could just run from cron on the clients with some skew to avoid overloading the distribution server. I believe you need to use svn delete for this? That is for when you are making the changes you intend to commit. I'll have to try that again .. didn't seem to be working the way I expected it to... You have to 'svn delete' in the working copy, then commit the change, then an update will replicate the action in another working copy. -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com
Re: software distribution with subversion
On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Jason Keltz j...@cse.yorku.ca wrote: See my email to Les... If only the rsync server could save a copy of the file checksums when it runs, it would probably decrease the sync time by half and save a whole lot of disk activity... If you don't use the --ignore-times option with rsync it will skip the checksum comparison on files where the timestamp, length, etc. match. It should only have to read the directory on both sides if nothing changes between runs. Be sure you are using options that propagate the timestamp (like -a) for this to work. -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com
