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hydrogen

Tools Open Source PHP WordPress

Hydrogen

By Mike Schinkel mike@newclarity.net of NewClarity LLC
The vision for Hydrogen is to be a WordPress-specific command line tool for configuration management, site provisioning and site deployment/redeployment.

Overview

Hydrogen allows professional WordPress developer to define “package manifests” (in YAML format)
that they can use to build a deployable “package” (in ZIP format) that can be deployed via FTP to web hosts and completely spun up as
a running website using the CPanel API.
We’d love to see this tool become a defacto standard tool for professional WordPress site builders since there is not currently
a tool that addresses what Hydrogen addresses so tell us what you like about it,
what you don’t like about it, and even better, contribute if you can.

Current Functionality

The initial release can:

  • Download and cache the latest version of WordPress core, plugins and themes.
  • Queue and Build a package based on a package manifest.

Planned Functionality

Future releases will be able to:

  • Handle specific versions and revision levels (i.e. 3.3.1 vs. 3.3.x) of core, plugins, themes.
  • Support pluggables, libraries, files in the uploads directory, etc.
  • Provision a web server on a CPanel host.
  • Upload a package file to a provisioned web server.
  • Unpack a package file into correct directories on a provisioned web server.
  • Configure initial site setting, menus, taxonomies and content.
  • …and a whole lot more.

Current Concepts

  • Hydrogen is a command-line tool using “h”.
  • Hydrogen views core, plugins and themes as “components.”
  • Hydrogen supports configuration files named .hydrogen in YAML format.
    * Hydrogen itselfs comes with a minimal config.
    * Hydrogen’s .hydrogen file contains a ‘config_dir’ directory that you should set after installing Hydrogen.
    * Hydrogen merges .hydrogen files via a defined hierarchy.
    * One of the .hydrogen file must have a “site_dir” that points to the site install that will allow Hydrogen to include /wp-load.php.
    * Hydrogen chose YAML for configuration files because it is easier to read and hand edit than JSON or XML.
  • Hydrogen has been implemented in PHP because it uses WordPress core for much of it’s functionality.
  • Hydrogen much have has been implemented in PHP because it uses WordPress core for much of it’s functionality.
  • The commands built for Hydrogen should also ultimately work as libraries within a plugin.
  • Hydrogen supports a ‘cache’ directory where it downloads components.
  • Hydrogen supports a ‘package manifest’ file in YAML format with ‘.hpm’ extension.
  • Hydrogen supports building a ‘package’ based on the package manifest file in ZIP format with an ‘.hpkg’ extension.
  • Hydrogen supports the concept of a “source” for components for which currently only “wordpress.org” is valid but with plans to support “github.com”, “bitbucket.org” and many more.
  • Hydrogen sources must support the concept of a unique version in some manner to support local caching of components.

Working Commands

  • cache-core – Download & cache latest released version of WordPress core.
  • cache-plugin {plugin_slug} – Download & cache latest plugin by slug “{plugin_slug}”
  • cache-theme {theme_slug} – – Download & cache latest theme by slug “{theme_slug}”
  • queue-package {package_name} – Copy files from cache into queue subdirectory based upon a “{package_name}.hpm” package manifest file.
  • build-package {package_name} – Combine queue files referenced in “{package_name}.hpm” to create a zipped “{package_name}.hpkg” file.

Probably Future Commands

  • deploy-package {package_name} {host_name} {domain} – Deploys test.hpkg to domain “{domain}” on host “{host_name}” defined by name in a .hydrogen config file.
  • More…

Supports

Currently Hydrogen only works on Mac OS X but would love to have others help add support for Linux and Windows.

Installation

  • Copy files to /usr/local/bin/hydrogen
  • Edit ‘config_dir’ variable to point to a directory that will contain your cache, your queue and your specific .hydrogen file.
  • Copy the .hydrogen-sample from the /usr/local/bin/hydrogen/samples directory to your ‘config_dir’ directory and rename to .hydrogen.
  • Modify your “{config_dir}/.hydrogen” file
  • Configure site_dir, cache_dir, queue_dir, and manifest_dir by replacing {your_username} your your Mac OS X username and {wp_load_site} with the directory where you have a working WordPress install.
  • Add/configure “hosts” as applicable by following the syntax examples in the sample.
  • Run “h show-help” from the command line to make sure it’s working.

Participation

  • Please fork it and start sending pull requests.
  • Ask questions here especially when things are not working.
  • There is a Google Group for email discussion at h-discuss.

History

License

See LICENSE.



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