Software Life Cycle: 4. Updating The Production Servers

Overview

New releases of the web app and associated databases are staged on the development server.

The Web App

Software Release Cycle

Development

Development occurs in private development sites, available at, eg, todd.wormbase.org. Each site is located in

  wb-dev:/usr/local/wormbase/website/DEVNAME

QA/QC and staging

QA/QC occurs on a version of the site staged for production, available at staging.wormbase.org, located at:

 wb-dev:/usr/local/wormbase/website/staging -> VERSION

Production

Once QA/QC is complete, the staged version of the site is mirrored to cluster nodes by rsync. A copy of the staged site is saved on the development server for quick reference:

wb-dev:/usr/local/wormbase/website/production

Checking out and building the code

For a new major release:

ssh wb-dev
cd /usr/local/wormbase/website
// Anonymously checkout the code. You will not be able to commit back...
hg clone ssh://hg@bitbucket.org/tharris/wormbase
mv wormbase staging

Build dependencies.

cd staging
mkdir extlib
cd extlib
perl -Mlocal::lib=./
eval $(perl -Mlocal::lib=./)
cd ../
perl Makefile.PL
make installdeps

Update wormbase.env to read "APPNAME=production", then

source wormbase.env

For an updated but minor release:

cd /usr/local/wormbase/website/staging
hg incoming
hg pull -u
perl Makefile.PL
make installdeps    // make sure we are up-to-date

Build the user schema

The website uses a mysql backend to store user preferences, browsing history, session data. This shouldn't ever need to be recreated (at least until we have a migration path in place from an old database to a new one!), but here's how to create it for reference. For now, this database is hosted on web1.

ssh web1
cd /usr/local/wormbase/website/production
mysql -u root -p 
mysql> parse /usr/local/wormbase/website/production/

Releasing a new build

New builds of the database are staged on wb-dev. Appropriate scripts are in the private wormbase-admin mercurial module.

Purge old builds

Purge a specific release from production nodes. This need to be run every release but is useful to periodically clear out old builds.

Remove build WSXXX, including acedb, mysql, and support DBs

wb-dev> admin/update/production/purge_old_releases.sh WSXXX

Remove build WSXXX from localhost (ie the dev server), including acedb, mysql, and support DBs

wb-dev> admin/update/production/purge_old_releases.sh WSXXX local

Push out Acedb

The Acedb data directory is kept in sync by cron:

wb-dev> cron_rsync_acedb.sh

Push out MySQL

Originally intended to be run as a cron job, it's less error prone to push databases out when they are ready to go.

wb-dev> cron_rsync_mysql_dbs.sh WSXXX

Deploy software

Deployment is handled automatically by a script in the wormbase-admin module:

wb-dev:admin/update/production/deploy_wormbase_app.sh WSXXX

• Reads the current version of the code in the staging/ directory.
• Rsyncs that directory to each web node in cluster:/usr/local/wormbase/website/$VERSION
• Updates the symlink on cluster:/usr/local/wormbase/website/production -> $VERSION
• Creates a release of the software (should it branch/tag, too?) to the releases directory and the FTP site.

wb-dev:/usr/local/wormbase/website/releases/YYYY-MM-DD-$WORMBASEVERSION-$VERSION-YYYY-MM-DD

• Creates a reference version of the production site for easy access on the dev server at:

wb-dev:/usr/local/wormbase/website/production