How to get started deploying PHP applications from

Question

I've heard the phrase "deploying applications" which sounds much better/easier/more reliable than uploading individual changed files to a server, but I don't know where to begin.

I have a Zend Framework application that is under version control (in a Subversion repository). How do I go about "deploying" my application? What should I do if I have an "uploads" directory that I don't want to overwrite?

I host my application through a third party, so I don't know much other than FTP. If any of this involves logging into my server, please explain the process.

Answer 1

To handle uploads, the classic solution is to move the actual directory out of the main webspace, leaving it only for a fresh version to be checked out (as I do in the script below) and then using Apache to 'Alias' it back into place as part of the website.

Alias /uploads /home/user/uploads/

There are less choices to you if you don't have as much control of the server however.

I've got a script I use to deploy a given script to the dev/live sites (they both run on the same server).

#!/bin/sh

REV=2410
REVDIR=$REV.20090602-1027

REPOSITORY=svn+ssh://[e-mail]/var/svn/website.com/trunk
IMAGES=$REVDIR/php/i
STATIC1=$REVDIR/anothersite.co.uk

svn export --revision $REV  $REPOSITORY $REVDIR

mkdir -p $REVDIR/tmp/templates_c
chown -R username: $REVDIR
chmod -R 777       $REVDIR/tmp $REVDIR/php/cache/
chown -R nobody:   $REVDIR/tmp $REVDIR/php/cache/ $IMAGES
dos2unix $REVDIR/bin/*sh  $REVDIR/bin/*php
chmod 755 $REVDIR/bin/*sh $REVDIR/bin/*php

# chmod -x all the non-directories in images
find $IMAGES -type f -perm -a+x | xargs -r chmod --quiet -x
find $STATIC1 -type f -perm -a+x | xargs -r chmod --quiet -x

ls -l $IMAGES/* | grep -- "-x"

rm dev && ln -s $REVDIR dev

I put the revison number, and date/time which is used for the checked-out directory name. The chmod's in the middle also make sre the permissions on the images are OK as they are also symlinked to our dedicated image server.

The last thing that happens is an old symlink .../website/dev/ is relinked to the newly checked out directory. The Apache config then has a doc-root of .../website/dev/htdocs/

There's also a matching .../website/live/htdocs/ docroot, and again, 'live' is another symlink. This is my other script that will remove the live symlink, and replace it with whatever dev points to.

#!/bin/sh
# remove live, and copy the dir pointed to by dev, to be the live symlink
rm live && cp -d dev live

I'm only pushing a new version of the site every few dats, so you might not want to be using this several times a day (my APC cache wouldn't like more than a few versions of the site around), but for me, I find this to be very much problem-free for my own deployment.

Answer 2

Here is an excellent article on using Subversion to deploy web projects — it answers many of your questions.

http://athleticsnyc.com/blog/entry/on-using-subversion-for-web-projects

Answer 3

It depends on your application and how solid the tests are.

Where I work everything gets checked into the repository for review and is then released.

Auto updating out of a repository wouldn't be smart for us, as sometimes we just check in so that other developers can pull a later version and merge there changes in.

To do what you are talking about would need some sort of secondary check in and out to allow for collaboration between developers in the primary check in area. Although I don't know anything about that or if its even possible.

There is also issues with branching and other like features that would need to be handled.