Automatically generate drush aliases

[anotherjames]

Maybe each provisioned Drupal site could get a drush alias generated? This would be particularly useful for projects that you have ssh into parrot to be able to run drush commands. (e.g. those requiring versions of PHP that your host machine doesn't have - in my case, PHP 7.1.)

If this is a non-starter for some reason, I can accept that. Otherwise, if some pointers towards how to achieve it could be provided, pretty please, maybe I can make this happen?

[darthsteven]

Yeah, should be fine!

Just need to write the alias files into the correct places.

Something like this manifest: https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/master/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/manifests/components/php/drush_alias.pp and associated templates with the correct information in is probably the way to go.

[anotherjames]

Thanks! Okay, well, for a start, let's figure out what the alias file needs to look like. I reckon something like this should suffice:

<?php

$aliases = array();
// @TODO For each directory within the parrot sites directory:
$basename = 'mysite.drupal'; // i.e. the current site's directory name.
$prefix = '/webroot'; // Only or sites that use a webroot sub-directory.
$aliases[$basename] = array(
  'uri' => 'https://' . $basename,
  'root' => '/vagrant_sites/' . $basename . $prefix,
  'php' => '/usr/bin/php7.1', // Unless .parrot-php7.0 or .parrot-php5 exist
  'local' => TRUE, // Required to avoid double-calling, see https://github.com/drush-ops/drush/issues/1870
);
// (endforeach)

I'm guessing ~/.drush/aliases.drushrc.php is a fine place to put this.

[anotherjames]

(I realise that doesn't exactly match the per-site alias files templates in your link, but it's a start.)

[darthsteven]

Put them in different files, then it'll be much easier to manage with Puppet.

[anotherjames]

So... how would I translate https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/master/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/manifests/components/php/drush_alias.pp into something for parrot? e.g.:

• What should define cm_serverbase::components::php::drush_alias ( be changed to?
• There are four file/@@file blocks, is the first one the only one we want?
• Looking at https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/2fe91f48af0743d5cf33a75c17e25eb29dc5da17/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/manifests/components/site.pp#L192 , I'm guessing that means we'd then want something similar in https://github.com/computerminds/parrot/blob/master/modules/http_stack/manifests/apache/site.pp ?
• I expect we then need the equivalent of https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/master/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/templates/php/drush_alias.erb ... hmm, interesting that doesn't include the 'local' => TRUE bit....

[darthsteven]

What should define cm_serverbase::components::php::drush_alias ( be changed to?

Naming things is hard, but it should probably sit somewhere within parrot_drush

There are four file/@@file blocks, is the first one the only one we want?

You'll want one for each user that we use in Parrot, so probably the root and www-data accounts make sense. you can ignore the @file resources, as those are exported resources, which we won't be able to use in Parrot anyway.

Looking at https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/2fe91f48af0743d5cf33a75c17e25eb29dc5da17/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/manifests/components/site.pp#L192 , I'm guessing that means we'd then want something similar in https://github.com/computerminds/parrot/blob/master/modules/http_stack/manifests/apache/site.pp ?

Yes.

I expect we then need the equivalent of https://github.com/computerminds/puppet/blob/master/custom_modules/cm_serverbase/templates/php/drush_alias.erb ... hmm, interesting that doesn't include the 'local' => TRUE bit....

Indeed we will. local => TRUE` is a recent Drush hack, right? Should our mainline CM Puppet include it do you think?

[anotherjames]

Indeed we will. local => TRUE is a recent Drush hack, right? Should our mainline CM Puppet include it do you think?

Honestly, I don't really know! Other than me, the only other CM person to run into needing this was Ross, and I think he ended up solving his problem another way anyway, after trying various combinations of this flag.

[darthsteven]

Presumably it wouldn't do any harm to have this in there?

[anotherjames]

Well, it could do. These aliases inside parrot would be new, so there's nothing existing to break. Whereas aliases in our default puppet config already exist on servers, so unless we know they're broken, I'm concerned about changing them with something like this that really could change their operation.

[darthsteven]

Okay, happy to leave until it appears to be a valid fix for something.