Introduction

With chopsticks you can simply import functions and hand them to the remote host to be executed.

First stand up an SSH Tunnel:

from chopsticks.tunnel import Tunnel
tun = Tunnel('troy.example.com')

Then you can pass a function, to be called on the remote host:

import time
print('Time on %s:' % tun.host, tun.call(time.time))

You can use any pure-Python function in the current codebase, meaning you can create your own libraries of orchestration functions to call on remote hosts (as well as functions that call out to remote hosts using Chopsticks). Naturally those functions can import pure-Python libraries and so on. Your entire local codebase should just work remotely.

Group allows for executing a callable on a number of hosts in parallel:

from chopsticks.group import Group

group = Group([
    'web1.example.com',
    'web2.example.com',
    'web3.example.com',
])
for host, t in group.call(time.time).successful():
    print('Time on %s:' % host, t)

You can also run your code within Docker containers:

from chopsticks.tunnel import Docker
from chopsticks.facts import python_version

dkr = Docker('py36', image='python:3.6')
print(dkr.call(python_version))

Tunnels and Groups connect lazily (or you can connect them proactively by calling connect()). They are also usable as context managers:

# Explictly connect and disconnect
group.connect()
group.call(time.time)
group.close()

# Reconnect and disconnect as context manager
with group:
    group.call(time.time)

# Implicit reconnect
group.call(time.time)

# Disconnect when destroyed
del group

Naturally, any remote state (imports, globals, etc) is lost when the Tunnel/Group is closed.

Python 2/3

Chopsticks supports both Python 2 and Python 3.

Because Chopsticks takes the view that agents run out of the same codebase as the controller, agents will attempt to use a similar Python interpreter to the one for the controller process:

  • /usr/bin/python2 if the controller process is (any) Python 2.
  • /usr/bin/python3 if the controller process is (any) Python 3.

Jupyter Notebooks

For interactive exploration, Chopsticks can also be used within Jupyter Notebooks. Functions defined in Notebook cells are sent over the tunnel as fragments of Python source (rather than imported).

This generally gives good results, but is somewhat more magical than Chopsticks’ standard import behaviour. Any odd behaviour should be reported via the issue tracker.

How it works

The SSH tunnel invokes the python binary on the remote host, and feeds it a bootstrap script via stdin.

Once bootstrapped, the remote “agent” sets up bi-directional communication over the stdin/stdout of the tunnel. This communication is used (currently) for two purposes:

  • An RPC system to invoke arbitrary callables within the remote agent and pass the returned values back to the controller.
  • A PEP-302 import hook system, allowing the remote agent to import pure-Python code from the controller (NB. the controller can only serve Python modules that live within the filesystem - import hooks such as zipimport/compressed eggs are not currently supported).

stdin/stdout on the agent are redirected to /dev/null, so calling print() on the remote machine will not break the tunnel.

stderr is echoed to the controlling console, prefixed with a hostname to identify which Tunnel it issued from. This can therefore be used to feed debugging information back to the orchestration host.

Chopsticks vs ...

It’s natural to draw comparisons between Chopsticks and various existing tools, but Chopsticks is a library, not an orchestration framework in its own right, and other tools could potentially build on it.

Ansible

Ansible’s YAML syntax is a lot more restrictive than Python. It is friendly for simple cases, but becomes increasingly ugly and convoluted as your scripts become more complex. By writing your orchestration scripts in Python you can take advantage of Python’s rich ecosystem of syntax and tools for writing clean Python code and documenting it, which apply even for very complicated use cases.

Ansible’s remote execution model involves dropping scripts, calling them, and deleting them. In Ansible 2.1, some of Ansible’s support code for Python-based Ansible plugins gets shipped over SSH as part of a zipped bundle; but this doesn’t extend to your own code extentions. So Chopsticks is more easily and naturally extensible: write your code how you like and let Chopsticks deal with getting it running on the remote machine.

Fabric

The big difference between Fabric and Chopsticks is that Fabric will only execute shell commands on the remote host, not Python callables. Of course you can drop Python scripts and call them, but then you’re back in Ansible territory for extensibility, or you have to bootstrap the dependencies needed to execute such scripts manually.

The difference in concept goes deeper: Fabric tries to be “of SSH”, exploiting all the cool SSH tunnelling features. Chopsticks doesn’t care about SSH specifically; it only cares about Python and pipes. This is what allows it to work identically with Docker or subprocesses as with remote SSH hosts.