Short way to scp using the same dir/file in origin and target

Question

I am frequently updating files from a development enviroment to a production one in different servers so the paths are the same in both hosts and it becomes kind of a repetitive procedure to update a file and indicate the same path for the scp parameters.

Is there a way to use brace expansion or other technique with scp parameters? I know one of them, origin or destination must include the user@host: at the start.

What I am trying to do is something like:

scp user@{dev-server,production-server}:/path/to/file

Answer 1

I propose two solutions not all using scp:

1. Use .ssh/config to help

Ie: put something like this in your .ssh/config

Host p
HostName production.domain.com
Host d
HostName development.domain.com

Then you can shorten your scp command:

scp user@d:/path user@p:/path

2. Use source control software like git. So when you're done with debugging and coding and stuff, you do this (simplified):

git add /path/to/my_file
git commit -m "new version and features done"
git push production master

(Just setup your git to use ssh)

3. Use qscp, or quick-scp - a bash script designed especially for your convenience :) https://github.com/zladuric/quick-scp Basically, get the qscp file and make it executable. (and change the defaults to your environment).

It will take one mandatory and two optional parameters. Example:

./qscp file     # it will use defaults
./qscp path/to/dir  dest.server.com # uses default source, but to other dest
./qscp /abs/path/to/file dest.srv.com src.srv.com # takes both dest and source server args

The scrpt should be easy to customize to your specific needs, but it is not extremely robust yet. You may have to adjust location of the scp binary, your ssh_key files or something similar.

How about them apples? :)

Answer 2

I think it is better to alias the command which you are executing everytime to even reduce typing.

Add the command in the .bashrc file of the user:

alias tx='scp user@{dev-server,production-server}:/path/to/file'

This will help to reduce the typing errors which may happen while typing the whole command.

But I think the way you are this doing is not correct at all. As zladuric told in the second way, you should use some version control system to maintain you code database. This will allow you to revert back to any previous version.