Services/Sync/Server/ReleaseProcess

Background

Python uses a built-in packaging system that allows packages to get installed in a specific folder called "site-packages", loaded at Python startup. Several installers exists for this. One of them being Python itself.

The Weave application we are building will be organized in two parts

• an .ini file used by the application to start up. It contains all the configuration needed by the weave server, like the location of the DB, etc.
• a .wsgi file used by Apache to run the application
• some Python packages. Right now just one called "weave.server"

Proposal

One simple way to release the weave server is to create a source distribution with all the packages and the ini file, for each version.

This distribution can be installed by the Ops using a distutils-compatible installer like Pip, or the built-in installer Python provides.

The ini file is installed in /etc/sync.ini and the packages in Python's site-packages, together with the .wsgi file.

Release process

Steps to prepare a release:

• run "python setup.py test" to check all tests pass
• tag the version in HG
• run "python setup.py sdist mozupload"

These steps create a .tar.gz release (done by "sdist") and is placed into a shared folder all servers can see (done by "mozupload".)

Installation

Steps to install a release on a server:

- run "pip install path/to/realase/WeaveServer1.1.4.tgz" - restart apache (or hot restart mode with apache)