Have you recently or ever got the "computer to do the donkey work?"

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#1

I’ll start with my tip which is to use RSYNC instead of FileZilla to update online websites… the latter is good but does take quite a few clicks to login. navigate to the correct path, select files to “Overwrite if the source code size is different or newer”. FileZilla is also quite slow because every file is checked and this takes time!

RSYNC keeps track of any previous transfers and updates only changed files but, also by default, compresses the changes, uploads and then expands the modifications into the correct large file!!!

The free RSYNC application is not straightforward but well worth the effort. Basic command line script usage is simple:

rsync [OPTION] … SRC … [USER@]HOST:DEST

Any useful tips, innovations, etc where you’ve actually managed to get the computer to reduce a humdrum or repetitive tasks?

#2

[off-topic]
Hi John. I was excited. I thought from your title you’d found a way to get the computer to bring in the logs! :biggrin:
[/off-topic]

3 Likes
#3

It sounds like you are referring to continuous deployment. The most common pattern for deploying code to a live server is pushing the code to a remote repo and running automated tasks to handle the deployment. All the major players aws, github, gitlab, bitbucket, azure, etc. provide this type of feature. Each vendor listed has ways to runs scripts or tasks in response to repo actions like pushing or merging a pull request. Several listed including gitlab provide various integrations with cloud vendors to make the process even easier.

#4

Update:

Just received this link to a DigitalOcean RSYNC Tutorial in a weekly newsletter.

I have always found their Tutorials very good, dated and allow comments.

#5

rsync has been around for over 20 years.

#6

I appreciate that the excellent utility “has been around for over 20 years”… the last upgrade was :

Rsync version 3.2.3 released
August 6th, 2020

The utilities and service mentioned in post: #3 seem far too complex for the original post " [ RSYNC ]The(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync) instead of FileZilla to update online websites…"