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Build Hooks

You can ask the dotCloud platform to run custom scripts at three different moments when you push an application:

  • before the build starts;
  • at the end of the build;
  • after the build is deployed (just before the services are actually started).

Note

The dotCloud build system checks the return value of each script used as a build hook. If the script returns anything except 0 then that is considered an error and the build fails.

Warning

If you want the build to halt on an error, be sure you exit your script with an error code (non-zero) as soon as the error occurs, or else a following statement which succeeds could mask the error. One easy way to do this in a shell script is to add set -e

Pre-Build

The pre-build hook is an optional command defined in your dotcloud.yml that will be executed before every build of your application. The command to execute has to be defined under the key prebuild in your service.

Note

The command will be executed at the root of your application, or in the approot if defined.

Example

If you have some external requirements in a private code repository (e.g: a github private repository), you can use a pre-build hook to setup SSH keys to access this repository.

Add the prebuild section to your dotcloud.yml file:

www:
  type: python
  prebuild: ./prebuild.sh

And create the prebuild.sh script:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
cat >~/.ssh/id_rsa <<EOF
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEowIBAAKCAQEArV8je2p2OUkRBEbPDSXvxWCXkEk74S0bMs7VmForvaM/9PNo
[...] pPu6QS3EMG2Z4gJiyY
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
EOF

Post-Build

The post-build hook is an optional command defined in your dotcloud.yml that will be executed after every build of your application. The command to execute has to be defined under the key "postbuild" for the concerned service.

Note

If you are using an approot your post-build script should be in the directory pointed by the approot directive of your dotcloud.yml.

For example, if you want to remove the SSH key installed by the post-build hook, you can do the following:

www:
  type: python
  prebuild: ./prebuild.sh  # from the previous example
  postbuild: rm -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Post-Install

The post-install hook is an optional special script placed at the root of your application that will be executed by dotCloud after every push.

The script must be executable and must be named "postinstall". So, if you are not on Windows don’t forget to run "chmod +x postinstall".

Note

If you are using an approot your postinstall script should be in the directory pointed by the “approot” directive of your dotcloud.yml.

For example the post-install hook is the simplest way to setup your crontab:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
crontab ~/current/jobs/crontab

You can write your post-install hook in any language, as long as you specify the right language to use with a shebang:

#!/usr/bin/env python

Obviously, replace “python” by your interpreter, e.g: “ruby”, “node”, “perl”…

Note

The ~/data directory is moved from the previous version of your service after the post-install hook execution. This means that the post-install hook cannot modify the content of the ~/data directory after the first push.

Warning

If your post-install script returns an error (non-zero exit code), or if it runs for more than 10 minutes, the platform will consider that your build has failed, and the new version of your code will not be deployed.