• Create an account alias using IAM even if you are the only single user using the aws account. Helps scale out to bigger teams when you need to with better granular access controls. You can read more about it here http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/iam/
• The process of creating the user will generate Access Id, Secret and also the password that will be used to login to the new Alias url
• Login via the newly created account on the account alias url and start a new project
• IAM doesn’t create your x.509 certificates for you, so you would need to do that yourself and upload it
• Use the following commands to generate a key for yourself

  $ openssl genrsa 1024 > private-key.pem #generate private key
  $ openssl req -new -key private-key.pem -out cert.pem #generate csr
  $ openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in cert.pem -signkey private-key.pem -out project-cert.crt #generate the final certificate
  

  

  From the definition in the documentation:

  • Access keys: symmetric key encryption. These are for making requests to AWS product REST or Query API. Can be obtained/regenerated from the access keys tab on the was security credentials page
  • X.509 certificates: public key encryption. use x.509 certificates to make secure SOAP protocol requests to AWS service API. These are the credentials you will use when using the command-line ec2 API tools. can be obtained/regenerated from the x.509 certificates tab on the AWS Security credentials page.
  • Key pairs: SSH key pairs when you create an intense amazon inserts the public key of your ssh key pairs into your new instance so that you can log in using your private key. you can add new ssh key-pairs though the AWS management console by clicking on Key Pairs.
• Upload the content of the crt in the popup that shows up when you click on ‘Managing Signing Certificates’. When finished it will give you a certificate id that can be used to reference certificates if you have more than one.
• Update the .bash_profile with the new variables that the tools would use.

  export EC2_KEYPAIR=$HOME/.ec2/sa/sa-aws-keypair.pem #this is the keypair you generate/download
  export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=$HOME/.ec2/sa/private-key.pem #this is the private key used to generate the cert
  export EC2_CERT=$HOME/.ec2/sa/aws-sa.crt #this is the cert you generated and uploaded
  export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
  

  and then update your shell with the new shell variables

  $source ~/.bash_profile
  

• Obviously then you need to install the tools if you don’t have it installed already. In you are using ubuntu you need to enable some repositories. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the following lines:

  #deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick multiverse
  #deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick multiverse
  #deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates multiverse
  #deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates multiverse
  

  and then update and install

  rp@supernova:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ec2-ami-tools ec2-api-tools
  

• Now test the configuration

  $ ec2-describe-images -o amazon
  

  if you see some results come back you are pretty much setup.

ServerAdmin rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/dynamic.log cookie
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/dynamic.error.log
RewriteLogLevel 0
RewriteLog /var/log/apache2/dynamic.rewrite.log

DocumentRoot /websites
UseCanonicalName off

VirtualDocumentRoot /websites/%2/%1/web
AllowOverride All

RewriteEngine On

More details can be found at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_vhost_alias.html#examples

So the next step was to make a pear package out of it so that other projects could extend out of it and also to free the developer of the include path hell that php offers and as part of the exercise, I ran my code past php code sniffer. However good the tool is, its lacking on part of documentation (or atleast i couldn’t find much) and its obscure error messages only meant that I would have to dig into the code to find out what exactly it was looking for. So here are some of them of the obscure ones:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 2 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 2 | ERROR | Missing file doc comment
 2 | ERROR | Missing class doc comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There isn’t any documentation that points out what it actually means with file document and class document. It turns out that it needs documentation about the class as well as the class, usually the same if there is only one level. Here is what I put in my class file to satisfy that.

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/

Here’s the next one:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 0 ERROR(S) AND 1 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 10 | WARNING | PHP version not specified
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now typically you would expect another @tag but its just * PHP version 5 that you need to add. This is what the final version looks like:

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* PHP version 5
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
class IPC_Test_Config

I hope this post if useful for anyone who wants to use a code sniffer to ensure that the quality of code is kept to its highest.

Creating svn directories

svn mkdir -m "create default directories" http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/trunk http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/tags http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/branches

Checkout these directories locally:

svn co http://svn.clients.rajatpandit.com/project-name/ .

Move to the trunk directory

cd trunk

Creating a new project

$  symfony generate:project brp
$ php symfony generate:app --escaping-strategy=on --csrf-secret=s3cr3t fe

Clear cache and log and add that to svn

rm -rf cache/* log/*
chmod 777 cache/ log/
svn add *

svn propedit svn:ignore cache
svn propedit svn:ignore log

Enter * in both the cases so that no files in cache and log get commited to svn

Add the new files to svn

svn ci -m 'adding the initial set of files'

Update the database settings, add the doctrine plugin and disable the propel plugin instead, edit the file config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php
and update the line with the following line:

  $this->enableAllPluginsExcept(array('sfPropelPlugin', 'sfCompat10Plugin'));

Publish the plug-in assets

rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk$ php symfony plugin:publish-assets
    plugin    Configuring plugin - sfProtoculousPlugin
    plugin    Configuring plugin - sfDoctrinePlugin

Delete the files for the propel plugin:

svn delete web/sfPropelPlugin
svn delete config/propel.ini
svn delete config/schema.yml
svn mkdir config/doctrine

Create new schema file and remove the default schema file.

rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk$ cd config/doctrine/
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ touch schema.yml
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ svn add schema.yml
A         schema.yml
rp@devbox:~/websites/project-name/trunk/config/doctrine$ svn ci -m 'adding schema for app'

svn delete config/databases.yml
svn ci -m 'removed the default databases.yml file'

Add database configuration settings:

php symfony configure:database --name=doctrine --class=sfDoctrineDatabase "mysql:host=127.0.0.1;dbname=project1" root password

Link to externals so that the latest version of the plugins and symfony gets checked out:

cd lib/
svn mkdir vendor
svn propedit svn:externals lib/vendor
svn ci -m 'updating symfony to version 1.2.7'
svn update lib/vendor/

That pulls out the most updated tagged version of symfony.

Update the configuration file config/ProjectConfiguration.class.php to use the local symfony version instead of the site-wide settings.

require_once dirname(__FILE__) . '/../lib/vendor/symfony/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php';

This is what you would get if you have a similar problem:

% curl -k https://www.yahoo.com
curl: (1) Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl

The problem is that you would usually have something that depends on curl so you cant install the version of curl with its variant straightaway, so you will first need to remove the dependent first, then remove curl and clean up the install and then finally install curl with its ssl variant followed by its dependents.

The steps are something like this:

busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Unable to uninstall curl 7.19.3_0, the following ports depend on it:
--->  	php5
Error: port uninstall failed: Please uninstall the ports that depend on curl first.
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall php5
--->  Deactivating php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Uninstalling php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
busybox:web rp$ sudo port uninstall curl @7.19.3_0 curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Deactivating curl @7.19.3_0
--->  Uninstalling curl @7.19.3_0
--->  Uninstalling curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
Error: Requested variants do not match original selection.
Please perform 'port clean curl' or specify the force option.
Error: The following dependencies failed to build: curl
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean curl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
--->  Cleaning php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
--->  Cleaning php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean curl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port clean php5
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install curl +ssl
--->  Fetching curl
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for curl
--->  Extracting curl
--->  Configuring curl
--->  Building curl
--->  Staging curl into destroot
--->  Installing curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Activating curl @7.19.3_0+ssl
--->  Cleaning curl
busybox:web rp$ sudo port install php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Fetching php5
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for php5
--->  Extracting php5
--->  Applying patches to php5
--->  Configuring php5
--->  Building php5
--->  Staging php5 into destroot
Warning: php5 requests to install files outside the common directory structure!
--->  Installing php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite

If this is your first install, you might want
cd /opt/local/apache2/modules
/opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs -a -e -n "php5" libphp5.so

* copy  /opt/local/etc/php.ini-dist to  /opt/local/etc/php.ini
--->  Activating php5 @5.2.9_0+apache2+macosx+mysql5+pear+sqlite
--->  Cleaning php5

I trolled through the svn manuals and some really interesting blog posts and summarizing the steps that I took to put my code base back into control. Its rather unusual that none of the steps below are anything special its just that I hadnt had to work on a situation where I had to work on a feature which might or might not see the daylight of being pushed to production.

So the first thing to do was to create the trunk, branches and tags directory.

$ mkdir ~/websites/secret-project/trunk \
            ~/websites/secret-project/branches \
            ~/websites/secret-project/tags

I now use dreamhost for my svn but you can replace this with any other repo (local or remote) to manage your code. So I would start by creating the initial directory structure in the repo.

$ svn import -m 'Importing the initial directory structure' \
                http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/trunk \
                http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/branches \

http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/tags

Now checking out the empty directory locally to setup the local directories we created locally.

$ svn co http://svn.rajatpandit.com/secret-project/trunk \
               ~/websites/secret-project/trunk

The next step is to ensure that you are always using the most recent version of symfony. I like this feature about svn. You can have multiple directories pointing to multiple repos, that we can always ensure that your project can benefit from the most recent versions. We start that by setting up the lib/symfony and marking that as having an external repo.

$ cd  ~/websites/secret-project/
$ mkdir trunk/lib
$ mkdir trunk/lib/vendor
$ svn propedit svn:externals lib/vendor
symfony http://svn.symfony-project.com/tags/RELEASE_1_2_4/

(1.2.4 being the most recent release at the time of writing this post)
This is a good time to commit this to the svn and get the latest code.

$ svn ci -m 'updating symfony to 1.2.4'
$ svn update lib/vendor

With the most recent codebase available in the vendors directory, now is a good time to do any sanity checks if you fancy.

php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/check_configuration.php
php lib/vendor/symfony/data/bin/symfony -V

If all works fine then there is one other configuration change that is required, after which you can start generating the basic stub of your code base. The change is to update the path sfCoreAutoload.class.php so that its picked up relative to where its placed.

require_once dirname(__FILE__).'/../lib/vendor/symfony/lib/autoload/sfCoreAutoload.class.php';

With that done and your basic symfony apps and modules created, you can now update the svn configuration so that you can ignore the cache and logs directory.

$ rm -rf cache/*
$ rm -rf log/*
$ chmod 777 cache
$ chmod 777 log
$ svn add *
$ svn propedit svn:ignore log
$ svn propedit svn:ignore cache
$ svn ci -m "updating the codebase with new apps/modules"

Its also a good idea to ensure that the auto generated files dont make it to the repo, which is clearly a waste as its usually good to generate them on the server after deployment, that way you are usually sure about your configurations and settings.

svn add --non-recursive lib/model
svn add --non-recursive lib/model/om
svn add --non-recursive lib/model/map
svn propedit svn:ignore lib/model/om
svn propedit svn:ignore lib/model/map

You can also do the same for forms and filters any other auto generated file like sql files). Obviously needless to say, you need to commit your files as often as possible and tag after each release.

This post has been heavily adapted from a post on Stereo Interactive which is a blog I usually end up on when I get stuck on symfony problems. Worth reading it as well. This post would usually form as my own pointer when starting on the next project on symfony.

Download Information available at:
http://git.or.cz/#download

Before you start, set some git variables.

# set your name and email, used for commit messages
$ git config --global user.name ""
$ git config --global user.email ""

# enable nice colorful output
$ git config --global color.diff auto
$ git config --global color.status auto
$ git config --global color.branch auto

You can see the other configuration settings using the command:

$ git config -l

Assuming you are in your working directory, initialize the repository using the command:

$ git init

and you should see the following echoed back to the screen:

Initialized empty Git repository in .git/

Now you can add all your current files to the repository using the command:

$ git add .

This is now saved in a temporary staging area which git calls the ‘index’, this can be made permanent by calling the following command:

$ git commit

Now you have a functional repository which you can use to track your changes. The following the basic commands for your usual daily actions.

Adding files to the repository:

$ git add file1 file2 file3

To see the status of the current files, modified or un added files.

$ git status

You can also see the difference in the modified files.

$ git diff --cached

Commit the file automatically (adding new files and then committing them to the index can be done using the following command:

$ git commit -a

And here are the most interesting bits, the ease of branching and merging that might make you fall in love with this.
Creating a new branch:

$ git branch wacky_idea

Listing all the current branches

$ git branch

wacky_idea
* master

If you now want to work on the new branch you need to set the mode to the new branch by checking out the branch.

$ git checkout wacky_idea

Modify and commit your files using the standard $git commit -a and then you can merge it back into master by first checking out master and then doing the merge.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge wacky_idea

it will show you the summary in case of no conflicts or give you an opportunity to fix them before doing the merge. You obviously would need to do a git commit -a to add your changes to the index and then if you want to remove the branch run git branch -d wacky_idea

There are loads of other interesting features that I will post back to the blog but its surely an interesting version control system. The reason I like this so much is because I do a lot of my development during travelling and by far this is the only CMS that I am aware of that allows you to work offline and online as well. There are always work around to run your repo locally on cvs but that doesn’t serve the purpose of code centralization.

Some interesting links for further reading:

• http://git.or.cz/
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/everyday.html
• http://jonas.nitro.dk/git/quick-reference.html
• http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html