[Fab-user] Automating remote interactive shell

[Claudius Heine]

Hi everyone,

I am currently looking for something that automates some embedded Linux
development steps on a remote build server and fabric might just be the
right tool for this.

But there is one issue where I would like your thoughts on. One part of
developing embedded Linux systems is connecting to the system via a
serial terminal in order to input some commands and read their output.

AFAIK their is currently no real solution to automate interactive
programs in fabric. There is the 'open_shell' command, but that just
gives the control to the user.

I could imagine that this functionality could be implemented in fabric
using a context manager. This implementation should then wrap around
_run_command and _execute in order to provide a compatible experience.
And the context manager provides the necessary settings (shell command,
shell prompt, shell exit sequence, ... and how the exit codes of the
programs can queried, etc.). There should also be a much simpler API
similar to pexpect that is used by the _run_command and _execute wrapper
for these higher functionality.

Is such functionality on the roadmap or do you know about something that
already exists outside of fabric that solves these issues?

Thanks and have a nice day,
Claudius

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