Problem with rsnyc pipeline in Bitbucket

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to deploy the content of a Bitbucket repo on a server using rsync. I followed the documentation and used the rsnyc-deploy pipeline to do that. Everythin works fine, except the whole destination directory is wiped before the source (the repo) is copied over.

I would like to keep the content in the destination directory and just update the modified files from my repo.

Example :

The repo contains various wordpress plugins and themes (wp-content/plugins/xxx/ and wp-content/themes/xxx). The server's public_html folder contains wp-admin/, wp-includes/, various .php files, and I don't want them to be deleted after each push on the repo.

I managed to find the working rsync command from my terminal to achieve what I want :
rsync -avz —update -e 'ssh -p $SSH_PORT' . $USER@$SERVER:$REMOTE_PATH

But I can't reproduce the same behaviour in my pipeline (showing only the relevant part, the rest is pretty much basic pipeline boilerplate) :

- pipe: atlassian/rsync-deploy:0.13.0
  variables:
    USER: '$USER'
    SERVER: '$SERVER'
    REMOTE_PATH: '$REMOTE_PATH'
    LOCAL_PATH: '.'
    SSH_PORT: '$SSH_PORT'
    EXTRA_ARGS:
      - '-avz'
      - '--update'
    DEBUG: 'true'

The $REMOTE_PATH has a trailing slash, but in my tests it does the same things without.

Have anyone had the same problem and knows a fix?

Thank you for your help!

Arkadiusz Wroblewski · Answer

Hello @Thomas Bris

Look here. That will explain you a little how to get rid of the --delete-after flag rsync-deploy:0.2.0 - Atlassian

Best,

Arek🤠

Josh · Answer

Hi Thomas, it's the pipe, not your args. atlassian/rsync-deploy has a DELETE_FLAG variable that defaults to true, and it adds --delete-after to the rsync command. That's what removes wp-admin/, wp-includes/ etc. from the destination. Your terminal command doesn't have it, which is why that one behaves.

Turn it off, and I'd also exclude the repo plumbing so it doesn't land in public_html:

- pipe: atlassian/rsync-deploy:0.13.0
  variables:
    USER: $USER
    SERVER: $SERVER
    REMOTE_PATH: $REMOTE_PATH
    LOCAL_PATH: '.'
    SSH_PORT: $SSH_PORT
    DELETE_FLAG: 'false'
    EXTRA_ARGS:
      - "--update"
      - "--exclude=.git"
      - "--exclude=bitbucket-pipelines.yml"
    DEBUG: 'true'

With DEBUG: 'true' the log prints the full rsync command, so you can confirm --delete-after is gone before the next push.

A safer option once it works: deploy only what the repo owns, e.g. LOCAL_PATH: 'wp-content/' with REMOTE_PATH pointing at .../public_html/wp-content/. Then even if someone switches the delete flag back on later, it can only touch wp-content. (The pipe README lists DELETE_FLAG under Variables.)

Viswanathan Ramachandran · Answer

Hi,

Can you add/set Delete flag to false in your pipeline and any extra flags under extra args?

or as an alternative, if you prefer full control over the exact flags without using pipe defaults, you can also run your working CLI command directly inside the pipeline's script: block. Here, I assume bitbucket's default SSH keys are configured in Repository settings > SSH keys