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Context Managers

Context managers for use with the with statement.

Note

When using Python 2.5, you will need to start your fabfile with from __future__ import with_statement in order to make use of the with statement (which is a regular, non __future__ feature of Python 2.6+.)

fabric.context_managers.cd(path)

Context manager that keeps directory state when calling operations.

Any calls to run, sudo or local within the wrapped block will implicitly have a string similar to "cd <path> && " prefixed in order to give the sense that there is actually statefulness involved.

Because use of cd affects all such invocations, any code making use of run/sudo/local, such as much of the contrib section, will also be affected by use of cd. However, at this time, get and put do not honor cd; we expect this to be addressed in future releases.

Like the actual ‘cd’ shell builtin, cd may be called with relative paths (keep in mind that your default starting directory is your remote user’s $HOME) and may be nested as well.

Below is a “normal” attempt at using the shell ‘cd’, which doesn’t work due to how shell-less SSH connections are implemented – state is not kept between invocations of run or sudo:

run('cd /var/www')
run('ls')

The above snippet will list the contents of the remote user’s $HOME instead of /var/www. With cd, however, it will work as expected:

with cd('/var/www'):
    run('ls') # Turns into "cd /var/www && ls"

Finally, a demonstration (see inline comments) of nesting:

with cd('/var/www'):
    run('ls') # cd /var/www && ls
    with cd('website1'):
        run('ls') # cd /var/www/website1 && ls

Note

This context manager is currently implemented by appending to (and, as always, restoring afterwards) the current value of an environment variable, env.cwd. However, this implementation may change in the future, so we do not recommend manually altering env.cwd – only the behavior of cd will have any guarantee of backwards compatibility.

fabric.context_managers.hide(*groups)

Context manager for setting the given output groups to False.

groups must be one or more strings naming the output groups defined in output. The given groups will be set to False for the duration of the enclosed block, and restored to their previous value afterwards.

For example, to hide the “[hostname] run:” status lines, as well as preventing printout of stdout and stderr, one might use hide as follows:

def my_task():
    with hide('running', 'stdout', 'stderr'):
        run('ls /var/www')
fabric.context_managers.settings(*args, **kwargs)

Nest context managers and/or override env variables.

settings serves two purposes:

  • Most usefully, it allows temporary overriding/updating of env with any provided keyword arguments, e.g. with settings(user='foo'):. Original values, if any, will be restored once the with block closes.
  • In addition, it will use contextlib.nested to nest any given non-keyword arguments, which should be other context managers, e.g. with settings(hide('stderr'), show('stdout')):.

These behaviors may be specified at the same time if desired. An example will hopefully illustrate why this is considered useful:

def my_task():
    with settings(
        hide('warnings', 'running', 'stdout', 'stderr'),
        warn_only=True
    ):
        if run('ls /etc/lsb-release'):
            return 'Ubuntu'
        elif run('ls /etc/redhat-release'):
            return 'RedHat'

The above task executes a run statement, but will warn instead of aborting if the ls fails, and all output – including the warning itself – is prevented from printing to the user. The end result, in this scenario, is a completely silent task that allows the caller to figure out what type of system the remote host is, without incurring the handful of output that would normally occur.

Thus, settings may be used to set any combination of environment variables in tandem with hiding (or showing) specific levels of output, or in tandem with any other piece of Fabric functionality implemented as a context manager.

fabric.context_managers.show(*groups)

Context manager for setting the given output groups to True.

groups must be one or more strings naming the output groups defined in output. The given groups will be set to True for the duration of the enclosed block, and restored to their previous value afterwards.

For example, to turn on debug output (which is typically off by default):

def my_task():
    with show('debug'):
        run('ls /var/www')

As almost all output groups are displayed by default, show is most useful for turning on the normally-hidden debug group, or when you know or suspect that code calling your own code is trying to hide output with hide.

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