Serverus

Serverus is a branch server for your git repository. After setting it up, serverus will allow you to view and start/stop each of your git branches from a simple "admin" console, and view the running server for each branch either on a unique port or a subdomain.

Installation

Installation via npm is simple:

npm install serverus -g

serverus will now be available from the commandline

Usage

First you need to initialise serverus:

serverus init path://to/myrepo.git

A directory called myrepo.serverus will be created under the current directory - inside is a serverus.json file for your build/deploy settings, and a _repo directory containing a git checkout of your code. It might take a few minutes to run this step, as serverus has to do a full git clone of your repository.

You probably want to update your settings at this point - edit serverus.json:

{
    // Command to run before the main script, this will be run in the root directory of your code.
    // This directory will be one level down from your serverus directory, so you can put shared scripts alongside serverus.json and run them with "../"
    "beforeExec": "command",
    // Args to pass to the beforeExec script
    "beforeExecArgs": [],
    // Executable to run - this should be in your system PATH and will be run in the root directory of your code.
    "exec": "node",
    // Arguments to run the executable with
    // the string "$PORT" is special and will be replaced with the port that serverus wants this instance to run on
    "args": ["server.js", "--port=$PORT"],
    // An array of files you don't want to be deployed - serverus will also respect your .gitignore file
    "excludeFromDeploy": [],
    // Branches to run on startup (you can run others on demand)
    "branches": ["master"],
    // Config overrides for various branches
    "master": {
        "args": ["server.js", "--port=80"]
    }
}

When you're ready to serve your app, use:

serverus run

Visit http://localhost:8123/ to see your branches and that's it!

Additional config

You can use the --help flag to get commandline options for serverus run:

Usage:
  run [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

Options:
  -p, --port [NUMBER]    Port for serverus to listen on (Default is 8123)
  -s, --startingPort [NUMBER]Port to start branch servers listening on (Default is 8124, or port+1)
  -r, --root [STRING]    Root URL of server instances, affects the URL linked
                         to from the serverus server  (Default is /)
  -d, --domain [STRING]  The domain name to serve branches up as subdomains of  (Default is localhost)
      --force BOOL       Force run, remove __serverus.lock file from
                         checkout if necessary
  -h, --help             Display help and usage details

You can also specify the majority of these options in serverus.json, using the full name (eg port not p).