I am developing a site locally using xampp. I would like to configure cron, so the dev environment is the same as the production environment. However, my system is windows vista. Is there any way to do this, or am I forced to accept that my dev and production environments will be forks?
I would highly recommend looking into Cygwin. I was using that when I wanted linux/unix utilities on Windows. It supports Cron as well.
Jacob
Btw this is a really good question...there are a lot of good scheduled task apps out there. The 1 I liked is Visual Cron at http://www.visualcron.com/
Running a scheduled task, is a very tough thing for web server/web apps to do...Because they have to check every x seconds or minutes to see if a task needs to be done, which can suck up cpu cycles for your web server/apps.
Which is why i prefer using an os based task scheduler or os task scheduling software, better performance I believe.
One trick that I had learned, was using php's -f command to create scheduled tasks without having to open a browser window, then it can run tasks...
On window's systems the only other way was opening up ie/firefox/opera whatever to run your web-based task..
good luck!
You could create a windows scheduled task to run cron.php (or call it in the browser).
Related
I have an XML database that I want to manage independently from users on my website. Looking into the matter it appears that I should write a daemon script to manage my database. That is all fine and dandy but, I feel like I'm opening a can of worms. I wanted to write my daemon script in PHP, so I looked into PCNTL. But I quickly learned that PCNTL is not suited for web servers. So now I am stumped. How can I get a daemon to run on my server? Do I need to learn another language? I only want to write my own scripts. But I feel lost. I would prefer to write my daemon in PHP as I am familiar with the language.
I have been researching everything from PCNTL, CLI, SO questions, numerous articles on daemon processes... etc
I am running PHP 5.6.32 (cli), windows 7, on Apache. XAMPP 5.6.32. Unix system.
EDIT: I also have windows setup to run PHP from command prompt.
There's nothing wrong in running a PHP daemon, however it's not the fastest thing, especially before the 7.0 version. You can proceed in two ways:
Using Cron Jobs, if you're under Unix systems crontab will be fine, in this way you can specify the interval within the system automatically executes the specified script and then exit.
The true daemon, firstly you need to change the max_execution_time in PHP.ini to 0 (infinite), then in your daemon call for first function set_time_limit(0);, remember to run it only once. However if there is some failure like a thrown error uncatched the script will exit and you need to open it again manually, and don't try...catch in a while loop because it will probably go into an endless loop. Execute the script with php -f daemon.php.
What I have so far:
Two VirtualBox LAMP machines (separate locations) where I connect my two Windows development machines via SFTP, to write code using PHPStorm.
One VPS machine where I deploy my code written for a project in Laravel.
What I am trying to achieve:
Fast and easy code deployment, as in: write the code in Windows via PHPStorm, test it on the LAMP machine, deploy to VPS if necessary.
The problem is that I need to use some php artisan commands on LAMP machines to get some code generated. This means that I always have to synchronize PHPStorm with LAMP files tree in order to see the changes. Then, I need to also sync the other dev (LAMP) machine and the other PHPStorm running on Windows machine number 2. I know that this can be done via Git.
So everytime I use the command line to generate code, I need to sync 4 machines (excluding the deployment server).
Later, if I add another pair of Windows/LAMP dev machines, the complexity grows.
Back in the days of Dreamweaver, I could write code directly on the deployment server. Not the greatest idea, but it was way much simpler and faster, and that's what I need now.
Any ideas on how can I simplify this?
Switching to WAMP so I can have files in sync with PHPStorm (because all is locally) is not OK because... Windows and PHP libraries issues :)
Also, switching to Dreamweaver is not OK either.
What other options do I have?
Thanks!
LE: on the side, I am also thinking if a NAS can be helpful for this type of problem.
LLE: is Linux Desktop + PHPStorm the only straight solution?
No matter the protocols
You can put your code outside of the guest machine and configure the guest machine to mount the code (mount a folder from the host inside the guest).
Apache will run slower because it will use the mounted remote-folder but PHPStorm will run at its maximum speed.
Taking protocols into consideration
Try using SSHFS on windows.
I use SSHFS for remote development from my Linux host machine to headless vagrant boxes (and/or to remote development servers / staging servers).
It's much faster than SAMBA (the windows SMB protocol) and oddly faster than NFS even though SSH uses encryption.
Coleages using Windows+SMB often leave their computers for 30 min while PHPStorm is indexing and git branch changes on the dev machine go unnoticed for minutes at a time.
Indexing over SSHFS usually takes less than 5 min on a Symfony2 project. Branch changes are detected in less than 15s.
Using Linux (shameless plug)
Linux is nice, and it's free, and it works out of the box (Ubuntu) -- including pesky USB-Modems which would normally require an install on windows.
You already know how to handle a Linux CLI the learning curve is already halfway crossed.
Auto-updates don't rule your life, they're not the king of you!
All the applications you need are part of the software repositories you don't need to look for anything, download 40+ executables and attempt to install them just to be welcomed by an error "invalid architecture", "windows version not supported", ".NET framework version too old", "DirectX version too new (wtf?)", "your cousin is a software pirate".
Dependency management is a concept Linux never fully solved -- but at least the bloody tried and in 90% of consumer use-cases it fits the bill. Windows is still eating glue at the back of the class.
How I solved the problem:
I have an extra Mac, on which I installed everything for my PHP ecosystem, including the IDE, so everything is local. That's the dev machine. Then I manually copy the code to the VPS when needed. Another solution was to install Ubuntu Desktop (or similar) on dual boot with Windows and use it as a local dev environment.
Much faster development / deployment :)
I a have an application that is written in PHP and runs on Linux using LAMP stack and in Windows using XMPP stack (The PHP functions are called from Apache). I have requirements to kick off some activity periodically from the server side.
Currently I have the user use cron in Linux and and task scheduler in windows to kick off a PHP script which in turn calls the webserver to start the activity.
Both (Linux Cron and Windows Task scheduler) these options are cumbersome during deployment (Even with a detailed instructions it ends up incorrectly setup). So I am looking for a platform agnostic way to schedule async jobs.
Looking around, I see things like Celery (which seems more suited for Python). Are there any other facilities that can be used to achieve this function?
Can you explain what is your deployment model? I have worked with many deployments, where the post deployment sets the cron job in Linux properly. I am not familiar with Windows deployment, but that wont be difficult if you have proper deployment model and scripts to do this. There are many ways to do 99% reliable post installations and do more than cron job setup. But without knowing your deployment model i could not suggest you proper options.
What are the advantages of running scripts (generally speaking) locally on a personal computer?
Is it possible to run php files locally?
I can't really say what the advantages are, as it totally depends on what you're doing.
But yes, it's possible to run locally. You just need to set up a server. Some popular ones include xampp and easyphp.
It's difficult to say advantages. Advantages as compared to what? The advantages of running any script or program are that it accomplishes a goal it was designed for to facilitate the life of the user (hopefully). Running one on your local computer is not any different than running one remotely, per se.
As for running php files locally, yes, you can do this very easily. Just install php and there you go. If you are running a linux machine, it's very easy to install and run php scripts as executables to do whatever you want them to do. If you want to run the php scripts through something like mod_php, you must install a server. Apache is small and easy to install. I'm sure there are countless others.
The main advantage is that, in the development & testing phases, if you run the scripts locally, you suffer less lag than running them on a remote server, and you don't have to upload them each time you change them, which in development phases happens very often (ie continuously).
We have various php projects developed on windows (xampp) that need to be deployed to a mix of linux/windows servers.
We've used capistrano in the past to deploy from windows to the linux servers, but recent changes in architecture and windows servers left the old config not working. The recipe works fine for the linux deployment, but setting up the windows servers has required more time than we have right now. Ideas for the Capistrano recipe are valid answers. obviously the windows/linux servers don't share users, so this complicates it a tad (for the capistrano assumption of same username/password everywhere).
Currently we're using svn-update for the windows servers, which i dislike, since it leaves all the svn files hanging on the production servers. (and we still have to manually svn-update them on windows) And manual updating of files using winscp and syncing the directories with their linux counterparts.
My question is, what tools/setup do you suggest to automatize this deployment scenario:
"Various php windows/linux developers deploying to 2+ mixed windows/linux machines"
(ps: we have no problems using linux tools or anything working through cygwin, we simply need to make deployment a simple one-step operation)
edit: Currently we can't work on a all-linux enviroment, we have to deploy to both linux and windows server. We can start the deploy from anywhere, but we'd prefer to be able to do it from either enviroment.
I use 4 different approaches depending on the client environment:
Capistrano and similar tools (effective, but complex)
rsync from + to Windows, Linux, Mac (simple, doesn't enforce discipline)
svn from + to Windows, Linux, Mac (simple, doesn't enforce discipline)
On-server scripts (run through the browser, complex)
There are some requirements that drive what you need:
How much discipline you want to enforce
If you need database (or configuration) migrations (up and/or down)
If you want a static "we're down" page
Who can do the update
Configuration differences between servers
I strongly suggest enforcing enough discipline to save you from yourself: deploy to a development server, allow for upward migrations and simple database restore, and limit who can update the live server to a small number of responsible admins (where the dev server is open to more developers). Also consider pushing via a cron job (to the development server), so there's a daily snapshot of your incremental changes.
Most of the time, I find that either svn or rsync setups are enough, with a few server-side scripts, especially when the admin set is limited to a few developers.
This will probably sound silly but... I used to have this kind of problem all the time until I decided in the end that if I'm always deploying on Linux, I ought really to at least try developing on Linux also. I did. It was pain free. I never went back.
Now. I am not suggesting this is for everyone. But, if you install VirtualBox you could run a Linux install as a local server on your windows box. Share a folder in the virtual machine and you can use all your known and trusted Windows software and techniques and have the piece of mind of knowing that everything is working well on its target platform.
Plus you'll be able to go back to Capistrano (a fine choice) for deployment.
Best of all, if you thought you knew Linux / Unix wait until you use it everyday on your desktop! Who knows you may even like it :)
Capistrano is the nicest deployment tool I've seen. Do the architecture changes make it impossible to fix the configs so it works again?
Why you can't use capistrano anymore?
Why you dislike svn-update?
What things in your app requires an special deployment ?
You can setup svn:ignore property on configuration files, so that svn update doesn't erase them, and then use svn export /target/path/ to get rid of .svn files in your Subversion repository.