fabric




Fri, Jul 26, 2013 | announcements, fabric, paramiko

Deciding when to release software can be difficult. Releasing after every patch or merge is typically too much, though some argue otherwise: it depends how you define “often” in “release early, release often”.

The other options are “whenever you feel like it” and “have a specific schedule”.

Until now I’ve always gone with that middle option, waiting until a large-enough set of changes had piled up to merit a new release.




Mon, Nov 5, 2012 | fabric, paramiko, SSH

Introduction

This post evolved out of an update to this long running Fabric feature request that got too long for a Github comment.

The tl;dr for that issue is: folks want gateway support, the ability to bounce SSH connections off an intermediate host. This is useful for setups where you cannot reach your target node directly, but do have access to some gateway or staging box.

(Side note: this feature’s languished because I personally never needed it: ever since I picked up Fabric I’ve worked in environments savvy enough to have VPNs but small enough they didn’t have multiple networks.)

Recently, I reread most of Fabric #38, and there’s two solutions / SSH features contributors kept arriving at: ProxyCommand and direct-tcpip. I’ll explain what these are (insofar as I understand them myself), then compare/contrast.