Dotted is a new toolkit for deploying web apps over ssh to a web host.
The focus is on keeping it simple, and keeping the options open to make sure the migration from one version to the next can happen in an orderly manner. The inspiration is the "Upgrade now / Ask me tomorrow" type of question that we see more and more of.
The user, of course, would be much more certain about upgrading if there would be some information about who / how many have already upgraded. Maybe also a guarantee that it's possible to take the upgrade for a test run and maybe keep all the users's data available on both sides. Banks often have multi-year long upgrade processes while letting the customer choose. Google is trying, after having had very bad results from forcing their developers.google.com console upgrade onto people before it was even finished or fully usable.
- Let users stay on their version as long as their session is open.
- Allow minor backend upgrades and important bugfixes to happen silently
- Let the user upgrade voluntarily
- All new sessions get the newest deployed code
- Keep things very cacheable
After git cloning dotted, try cd dotted; . home in the terminal. Trust, but verify!
. help # Lists all the Dotted commands:
. up # check performance and push
. major # when there's a major update and users should reload
. launch # pull from github and launch on a new port
Partly implemented
JSON responses should include these keys:
'dotted':
'major': major version based on date and time as a long integer (sortable)
'tag': sha1 (from git) of the code
'migrate': false, or an address:port where the client's session migrates to
'status_message': user-friendly server status message
'status_detail': where the uptime-page for this service is located
A basic setup script to install "dotted" into a VM can be launched with:
curl -L goo.gl/u8dCzH|bash
The full train of thoughts is in the JOURNAL text
The live ticker and chart gets data from /data asynch and responses might come in out of order.
- check that Highcharts handles out of order data nicely
- avoid updating ticker box from newer to older data