Vision

Transmutator is a general purpose migration framework. It focuses on automating actions you perform to upgrade (or downgrade) a product.

Upgrades are migrations

Provisioning is not enough to manage upgrades. Database migrations are just a part of the upgrade procedure. We need migration scripts and workflows.

Migration scripts

  • Recipes are libraries that provide classes with forward() and backward() methods.
  • Dispatchers manage lists of actions to run and watch/notify stop conditions.
  • Migration scripts load, configure and run recipes.
  • Collecter grabs the list of unapplied migration scripts.

Migration scripts are small shell scripts that accept standardized arguments: they “forward” by default, they optionally implement “–backward”. The language in which scripts are written does not matter.

There is two kind of migration scripts:

  • atomic mutations, migrations that focus on one thing;
  • orchestration, migrations that focus on running smaller scripts.

An upgrade from a release to another is typically encapsulated in an orchestration-type script, which itself groups atomic-type scripts.

Migration workflows

Automating everything is hard, sometimes impossible, sometimes unwanted. A migration procedure is a workflow: it passes from one state to another via transitions. Most transitions can be automated, but some may require human interaction.

Example of human interactions:

  • setup SSH keys
  • update configuration where defaults are not suitable
  • review and confirm some actions
  • perform actions that have not been automated yet

Iterative deployment development

When you start a project, you do not want to spend days to get the perfect deployment workflow. In fact, you usually cannot even get a suitable deployment workflow at first. Partly because you do not know how to deploy things you have not developed yet. Partly because you want to focus on proof of concepts, where automated deployment is not top priority.

Transmutator allows you to setup interactive workflows, where you can tell the user to perform actions you have not automated yet.

Remote-control multiple machines

On distributed architectures, you have to orchestrate migrations on multiple machines. Transmutator runs high-level migration scripts that use your favorite remote-control tools, such as fabric or salt.

From DEV to PROD

Migrations are part of the development process. Several developers can contribute to migrations, concurrently. Transmutator is made to reproduce migrations over every environments, from DEV to PROD. The differences between DEV (tends to be monolithic) and PROD (tends to be distributed) are managed via configuration. Transmutator supposes you manage architecture as configuration.