Swifty rsync Upload

Whenever I upload a new post or update my static website I use the tried-and-tested rsync (I even made a post about it here). This is the rsync command I type every time:

rsync -avzrO --no-perms --delete . compendium.xyz:/path/to/www --exclude=".DS_Store"

It's a handful. Very powerful too.

While it works as intended, it's kinda laden with landmines as one mistype can have unintended consequences. I need to tread carefully all the time. One day I will might lose concentration for one second and mayhem could ensue.

Taming the force

I'd like a command that gives me some safety, so that, for example, I won't burn myself if I momentarily lose focus (like uploading the wrong files and deleting the ones in the server just because I'm not in the correct directory).

I'd also like a command where it allows me to continue to be in cerebral mode after finishing a post, not forcing me to switch to Linux admin mode immediately. A system where the only thing required of me is to remember—even absentmindedly—just the name of the command.

So the best compromise I came up with was to wrap my current rsync incantation inside a Swift script and give it a short and simple name. By doing this, I wrest some control from rsync's raw power.

Usage

Inside of my dev environment's Build folder I issue this command in the terminal:

upload basically syncs my local files with the server files behind the scenes.

But see what happens if I issue the command and I wasn't in the correct folder (Build):

Now on to installation.

Configure

Inside SwiftUpload.swift, under the // CONFIGURE HERE section add your

• server host in host constant,
• destination directory (path of your website's directory) in dest constant, and
• the local build directory in buildDir constant

Compile

Now compile the file into an executable by typing the command in the terminal:

swiftc SwiftUpload.swift -o upload

The -o upload tells the compiler that the output of this process will result in an executable named upload, meaning, the name of the command executable is upload. One thing to note, with swiftc you do not need to do chmod +x upload anymore.

Now, if you find yourself face to face with this error, like me:

<unknown>:0: error: cannot load underlying module for 'CoreGraphics'
<unknown>:0: note: did you forget to set an SDK using -sdk or SDKROOT?
<unknown>:0: note: use "xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc" to select the default OS X SDK installed with Xcode

It means that we attempted to import some OS X lib but the compiler can't load it (in our case, the Foundation lib). It is easy to rectify though, we just use this to compile instead:

xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc SwiftUpload.swift -o upload

That's well and good, but rather than typing the rather long compile command just put it as an alias in .profile or .zshrc like so:

alias swiftc='xcrun -sdk macosx swiftc'

Then we can go back to using

swiftc SwiftUpload.swift -o upload

Install

By now, an executable file named upload will exist in our current directory. We either move it to /usr/local/bin or, like me, I have a (local) ~/bin with the PATH environment properly set, so I just move it there.