The document outlines the development setup for the b-translator project, including installation, web server configuration, and maintaining a local development environment based on Drupal7. It covers crucial operations such as reinstallation, making backups, and using git for code management while providing guidelines for synchronization between development and production servers. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of a proper testing workflow to ensure stability before deploying updates to the live application.

1. Development Setup of B­Translator
Author: Dashamir Hoxha <dashohoxha@gmail.com>
Date: 2013-07-08 17:54:13 CEST
HTML generated by org-mode 6.33x in emacs 23
B-Translator helps to get feedback about l10n (translations of the programs). It tries to
collect very small translation contributions from a wide crowd of people and to dilute them
into something useful. It is developed as a Drupal7 profile and the code is hosted on
GitHub. Here I describe the development setup and process that I use for this project. Most
of the the tips are project specific, however some of them can be used on any Drupal
project.
Table Of Contents
• Installation
• Changing the webserver
• Re-installing the application
• Making a clone for development
• Making a backup of the application
• Accessing the code of the application from outside chroot
• Pushing commits to github
• The commit workflow
• Making a local git clone of the dev application
• Working with a dev-test-live workflow
Installation
Installation for development is the same as the installation for a production server, inside a
chroot. The steps are like this:
mkdir /var/chroot
cd /var/chroot/
git clone https://github.com/dashohoxha/B-Translator.git
nohup nice B-Translator/install/install.sh btr &
tail -f nohup.out
chroot btr/ /tmp/install/config.sh
chroot btr/ rm -rf /tmp/install
reboot ## it is advisable to reboot the host after this installation
Changing The Webserver
The webserver that is used for production is NGINX because it is more responsive in high
load, has build in cache, etc. The configuration of NGINX is also tweaked for production (has
DoS protection, short timeout, etc.) For development Apache2 can be more suitable. It can
be started and stopped like this:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/

2. /var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/dev/apache2.sh start
/var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/dev/apache2.sh stop
Important: When apache2 is started, the services nginx, memcached and php5-fpm are
stopped. Don't forget to modify the init script /etc/init.d/chroot-btr like this:
#CHROOT_SERVICES="cron php5-fpm memcached mysql nginx"
CHROOT_SERVICES="cron mysql apache2"
The script apache2.sh cannot make this modification automatically because it runs inside
the chroot, and the init script is outside the chroot (on the host system). So it has to be
done manually.
I also add something like this on /etc/hosts, so that I can access it on the browser with a
domain name:
127.0.1.1 l10n.org.xx dev.l10n.org.xx
This modification has to be done manually as well.
Re­Installing The Application
It can be done with the script dev/reinstall.sh:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
/var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/dev/reinstall.sh
It will rebuild the Drupal directory with drush make and install the btranslator profile with
drush site-install, and then do all the rest of configurations just like they are done during
installation.
Normally there is no need to reinstall the application, unless we want to test the
installation profile and the installation scripts.
Another kind of re-installation, which touches only the database of Drupal (btranslator) and
nothing else, can be done with the script dev/reinstall-db.sh:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
/var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/dev/reinstall-db.sh
It is useful for testing the features. Usually, when features are un-installed, things are not
undone properly. In order to leave out a feature, it should not be installed since the
beginning. So, it is important to test different combinations of them to see which one works
better for us.
Making A Clone For Development
Inside the chroot I make a clone for development like this:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
cd /var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/
dev/clone.sh dev
It creates a new application with root /var/www/btranslator_dev/ and with DB named

3. btranslator_dev. It also creates the drush alias @dev, and modifies the configuration of
the webserver so that the cloned application can be accessed at dev.l10n.org.xx.
Caution: The root directory and the DB of the clone will be erased, if they exist.
Other clones like this can be created for testing etc. To cleanup (remove/erase) a clone, we
can use clone_rm.sh like this:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
cd /var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/
dev/clone_rm.sh dev
By the way, we can also modify a little bit the configuration of a development copy of the
application (in order to help us not confuse a development copy with a live or testing one),
with the script dev/config.php:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
cd /var/www/
drush php-script btranslator/profiles/btranslator/config.php dev1
drush @dev php-script btranslator/profiles/btranslator/config.php dev2
It will set site_name to 'B-Translator (dev1)', will make site email something like
'user+dev1@gmail.com', will enable email re-routing, display the devel menu on the footer
region, etc. It is not required, but sometimes may be useful.
Making A Backup Of The Application
Sometimes, when testing things on Drupal (installing/uninstalling modules etc.) things get
messy and it is not possible anymore to revert to the state that you were before starting
the test. In this case the only way to get safely to a previous stable state is by restoring a
backup (or installing from the scratch and repeating all the configurations).
A snapshot of the application is just like a full backup with a time stamp. It saves the state
of the application at a certain time, both the code (the whole Drupal directory) and the
database. It can be done like this:
chroot /var/chroot/btr/
cd /var/www/
ln -s btranslator_dev/profiles/btranslator/ B-Translator
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh make
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh make @dev
These will create the files snapshot-btranslator-20130602.tgz and snapshot-
btranslator_dev-20130602.tgz. They can be restored like this:
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh restore --file=snapshot-btranslator-
20130602.tgz
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh restore --file=snapshot-btranslator_dev-
20130602.tgz
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh restore @dev --file=snapshot-btranslator-
20130602.tgz
B-Translator/dev/snapshot.sh restore @dev --file=snapshot-btranslator_dev-
20130602.tgz

4. As you may notice, a snapshot of @dev can also be restored on the main application, and
the other way around.
However, in many cases a backup/restore of the database is all that is needed, and it is more
efficient. It can be done withdrush sql-dump and drush sql-query like this:
drush sql-dump > btranslator.sql
drush sql-dump @dev > btranslator_dev.sql
drush sql-query --file=$(pwd)/btranslator.sql
drush sql-query --file=$(pwd)/btranslator_dev.sql
drush @dev sql-query --file=$(pwd)/btranslator.sql
drush @dev sql-query --file=$(pwd)/btranslator_dev.sql
Accessing The Code Of The Application From Outside Chroot
In order to access easily the code of the application from outside chroot, I create a symbolic
link like this:
cd /var/chroot/
ln -s btr/var/www/btranslator_dev/profiles/btranslator/ dev
Now I can go to /var/chroot/dev/ and start emacs or any other tools. This way I don't have
to install emacs or any other development tools inside the chroot and can use the best of
development tools that my host environment can offer me.
Pushing Commits To Github
The copy of the application on /var/www/btranslator_dev/profiles/btranslator/ (as well
as the one on/var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator/) are actually clones of the git
repository at https://github.com/dashohoxha/B-Translator so we can pull from it and push
to it. Pulling (to get up-to-date) can be done by everybody, however pushing requires a
username and password (the ones that are used to access the account at GitHub).
The Commit Workflow
For small or straight-forward changes I can also work directly on the master branch, then
commit, and then push to github.
However I usually use a bit more complicated workflow. First I create and checkout a dev
branch. When the work is done I merge this branch to master and then delete it. Finally
push the commit(s) to github.
git checkout -d dev ### create a branch and switch to it
[work-commit-work-comit]
git checkout master ### switch back to master
git pull ### get any latest commits from github
git merge dev [--squash]
git push ### send commits to github
git branch -D dev ### erase the branch
Usually there are no commits comming from github, since I am the only developper (unless I

5. have worked and commited from some other location). So, when I merge without –squash
this usually results in fast-forward merge, which means that all the commits that I have
done on the branch dev are automatically transferred to the branch master.
However sometimes there may be dirty commits on the dev branch, which means that there
may be incomplete commits, or commits that reverse what was done on the previous
commits etc. When I wish to reorganise commits and make them cleaner, I use the –squash
option, which collects all the changes on the dev branch and leaves them on the master
sandbox as local modifications (uncommitted). Then I can redo the commits on a cleaner or
more logical way. Afterwards the dev branch will be deleted and the old commits will be
lost.
Making A Local Git Clone Of The Dev Application
Sometimes it is not easy or suitable to test modifications on the @dev application
(/var/www/btranslator_dev). For example this is the case when I have to test
install/uninstall, enable/disable modules, features, etc. In this case I test them on the main
application instance (/var/www/btranslator). Since both applications are clones of the
GitHub repository, it is easy to push commits from btranslator_dev to github and to pull
them from github to btranslator.
However, sometimes it is better to test modifications and make sure that they work, before
pushing them to github. This can be done if the code on btranslator is a git clone of the code
on btranslator_dev (instead of being a clone from github).
The script dev/git-clone-dev.sh makes just this. It replaces the code of btranslator with a
git clone of the dev branchfrom btranslator_dev. Then the workflow is like this:
1. Work and commit on the branch dev of btranslator_dev
2. Pull on btranslator and test.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until the modification that we are making is OK.
4. Push changes upwards to github, like this:
cd /var/www/btranslator_dev/profiles/btranslator
git checkout master
git merge dev [--squash]
git push
git branch -D dev
git checkout -b dev
So, after merging to master and pushing to github, we delete the branch dev and
create a new one.
5. Make a git pull on btranslator and sync it with btranslator_dev
cd /var/www/btranslator/profiles/btranslator
git pull
Working With A Dev­Test­Live Workflow
All the work that is described on the sections above is about development and local testing
that is done on a working copy (sandbox) of a chroot installation. This is usually installed on
my personal machine (that I use for development).

6. At some point, all the modifications have to be transferred to a public server, where the
application is in "production", performing "live". On that public server there is the same
chroot environment as in the development server. The synchronisation of the application
can be done via git push and pull.
However drush rsync and drush sql-sync offer another option for synchronisation. For
more details see:
drush help rsync
drush help sql-sync
drush topic docs-aliases
These commands use drush aliases, which allow also remote execution of drush commands.
On my development environment I have created the file
/etc/drush/remote.aliases.drushrc.php, which has a content like this:
<?php
$aliases['live'] = array (
'root' => '/var/www/btranslator',
'uri' => 'http://l10n.org.al',
'remote-host' => 'l10n.org.al',
'remote-user' => 'root',
'ssh-options' => '-p 2201 -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa',
'path-aliases' => array (
'%profile' => 'profiles/btranslator',
'%data' => '/var/www/btranslator_data',
'%pofiles' => '/var/www/PO_files',
'%exports' => '/var/www/exports',
'%downloads' => '/var/www/downloads',
),
'command-specific' => array (
'sql-sync' => array (
'simulate' => '1',
),
'rsync' => array (
'simulate' => '1',
),
),
);
$aliases['test'] = array (
'parent' => '@live',
'root' => '/var/www/btranslator',
'uri' => 'http://www2.l10n.org.al',
'remote-host' => 'www2.l10n.org.al',
'command-specific' => array (
'sql-sync' => array (
'simulate' => '0',
),

7. 'rsync' => array (
'simulate' => '0',
),
),
);
It defines the aliases live and test. The test/stage application is almost identical to the
live/production one, however it is not for public use. The idea is to test there first any
updates/upgrades of the application, in order to make sure that they don't break any
things, before applying them to the real live application. In my case it is placed on a
different server, however it can also be placed on the same server as the live application
(just make a clone of the main application with dev/clone.sh test).
When everything is set up correctly, the synchronisation can be done as simply as this:
drush rsync @live @test
drush sql-sync @live @test
drush rsync @live @dev
drush sql-sync @live @dev
Note: Synchronising this way from @test to @live or from @dev to @live, usually is a
HUGE mistake, but the simulate option on the config file will make sure that it fails.
For drush commands to work remotely, ssh daemon has to be running on the remote
server, inside the chroot environment. By default it is not installed, but it can be installed
with the script dev/install-sshd.sh. This script will also take care to change the ssh port to
2201, in order to avoid any conflicts with any existing daemon on the host environment, and
also for increased security.
For remote access to work correctly, the public/private key ssh access should be set up and
configured as well. For more detailed instructions on how to do it see:
http://dashohoxha.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-secure-ubuntu-server.html