How to set the working directory for a Fabric task?

Question

Assuming I define a trivial task to list files on a remote server:

from fabric.api import run, env

env.use_ssh_config = True

def list_files():
    run('ls')

And I execute it with:

fab -H server list_files

How can I specify the working directory for the command I'm running, other than doing:

run('cd /tmp && ls')

Which doesn't look very idiomatic to me?

Disclaimer: I'm looking at Fabric for the first time in my life and I'm totally new to Python.

Millham

be sure you take a look at the tutorial, this very question is covered in there. – Cumin

Answer 1

Use the Context Manager cd:

from fabric.api import run, env
from fabric.context_managers import cd

env.use_ssh_config = True

def list_files():
    with cd('/tmp'):
        run('ls')

Clustered

But what if I want all of my run commands to run in the same directory? Will I have to wrap my entire fabfile in a with cd()? Is there not something like env.working_dir = '/my/dir'? – Middlebuster

@Middlebuster if you don't want a huge block wrapped in a context manager, put all the black into a separate function and wrap call to this function into the context manager. – Munn

Note that the Context object now is contained within Invoke – Samaniego

Answer 2

Answer for fabric 2.4.0 looks like this:

from fabric import Connection

conn = Connection(host=HOST_NAME, user=USER_NAME, connect_kwargs={'password': PASSWORD})

with conn.cd('/tmp/'):
    conn.run('ls -la')

This is not covered by the fabric documentation but by the invoke documentation.

Alicaalicante

The fabric documentation suggests doing with Connection('host') as c:, so would you nest the with statements inside of each other? with Connection('host') as c: with c.cd('/tmp/'): – Gilletta