Fabric is a Python library and command line tool for automating deployment and system administration tasks. “Fabric is an awesome tool,” writes the London-based developer known as Tav. “Like Capistrano and Vlad, it makes deployments a lot simpler than with shell scripts on their own.”
However, Tav discovered that as deployments got more complex, he started wishing for “cleaner and more powerful API.” That’s why he decided to add some new features to the Fabric source code and create his own project. It can be found here. Tav’s changes aren’t part of a proper fork, but that’s something that’s being discussed.
The features added by Tav include:
- Run commands in parallel instead of one by one
- Staged deployment
- Ability to specify different environments and contexts
- Config file support
- Shell mode
- Task decoration
- Script execution
- Additional parameters
Fabric, and this off-shoot, are a good demonstration of IT workers taking matters into their own hands using open source hands. It reminds me of this diagram from RedMonk, which we showed you last week when we talked about Java’s fate in the enterprise:
