About Porter

Porter is a command-line interface (CLI) tool that makes it easy to run background services by adding a few lines to a configuration file. These services are managed by Supervisord, a process control system that ensures that all processes are kept up and running. With Porter, you don't have to manually start and manage background services in multiple terminal tabs. Instead, you can simply use the porter command to manage all of your services in a single place.

Installation

To install Porter, you can use composer or download the build manually from this repository.

composer global require anystack-sh/porter

Requirements

To use Porter you must install supervisord:

• macOS: brew install supervisor
• Linux: apt install supervisor

If you want to use the watch feature to restart services when files change you will also need to install:

• chokidar: npm install --global chokidar

Add your first project

In your terminal navigate to your project and run porter init to create a boilerplate porter.yml:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter init

 Create porter.yml in /Users/Developer/anystack? (yes/no) [yes]:
 > yes

Creating porter.yml boilerplate: ✔
Run "porter add" to add your product and start your services.

Modify porter.yml and add the services you want to run. In your terminal navigate to your project and run porter add:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter add

Adding /Users/Developer/anystack: ✔
Restarting Porter: ✔

A new porter.yml has been created. This file contains all the services you want to run in the background, for example:

services:
  - name: Queue
    command: php artisan horizon
    processes: 3 # Optional, number of parallel processes. Defaults to 1
    restart:
        watch:
            - app/Jobs
            - app/Mail/WelcomEmail.php
    
  - name: Vite
    directory: Users/developer/anystack/front-end
    command: npm run dev
    environment:
        FOO: "BAR"

  - name: Octane
    command: php artisan octane:start --port=8000 --no-interaction

  - name: Stripe
    command: stripe listen --forward-to localhost:8000/webhooks/stripe
    restart:
      minutes: 5

The following properties are available per command:

Property	Description	Required
name	Shortname that describes your service.	Yes
directory	Set the working directory, defaults to porter.yml directory.	No
command	The command to run relative to the root of your project or custom defined directory.	Yes
restart
- minutes	After how many minutes the service should restart.	No
- watch	Restart service if files or directories are modified.	No
processes	Set the number of parallel processes for the service. Defaults to 1.	No
environment	Set custom environment variables	No

If you have made changes to your porter.yml you can use the porter restart command to apply your changes.

Monitoring services

To monitor your services you can use the porter status command.

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter status
+----------+-----------------+---------+---------------------------+
| App      | Name            | Status  | Description               |
+----------+-----------------+---------+---------------------------+
| anystack | anystack-octane | RUNNING | pid 41277, uptime 0:03:29 |
| anystack | anystack-queue  | RUNNING | pid 41275, uptime 0:03:29 |
| anystack | anystack-vite   | RUNNING | pid 41276, uptime 0:03:29 |
+----------+-----------------+---------+---------------------------+

Tail service logs

Basic tail usage

You can tail one or more services (unified) using the porter tail command.

This command is context-aware and will automatically ask which services you want to tail:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail

 Which service do you want to tail?:
  [0] anystack-octane
  [1] anystack-queue
  [2] anystack-vite
 > 0,1
 
 Use CTRL+C to stop tailing.
 
 Horizon started successfully.
 
 INFO  Server running…
 Local: http://127.0.0.1:8000
 200    GET / ... 33.38 mb 79.10 ms

Tail all available services

To automatically tail all available services, pass the --all option:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail --all
 Use CTRL+C to stop tailing.
 
 Horizon started successfully.
 
 INFO  Server running…
 Local: http://127.0.0.1:8000
 200    GET / ... 33.38 mb 79.10 ms

Tail one or more services

You can specify one or more services that you would like to tail by passing
the --services option with a comma-separated list of service indexes or service names.

You can find the index and name of each available service by running porter tail with no arguments:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail

 Which service do you want to tail?:
  [0] anystack-octane
  [1] anystack-queue
  [2] anystack-vite

The following examples reference the service names and indexes found above:

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail --services=0,2

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail --services=anystack-octane,anystack-vite

The above two commands are functionally equivalent.

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail --services=1

~/Developer/anystack: $ porter tail --services=anystack-queue

The above two commands are functionally equivalent.

All available commands

Command	Description
porter add	Add current directory as a new application.
porter remove	Remove current application services.
porter start	Start all services.
porter restart	Restart one or multiple services.
porter stop	Stop all services.
porter tail	Tail service logs.

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License

Porter is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.