Liferay has a great SDK for use in creating plugins for their portal. I wrote the following script for deploying Liferay plugins (projects) to remote servers. This simplifies the Windows to *Nix transfer via SSH, and allows for deploying the same project to multiple servers, deploying different projects to the same (or different) servers, tailing logs, sending bash commands via CMD, and syncing the local system time with the remote server time* etc.

Calling the perl script below (called projects.pl) will load the XML file², will build the project, upload it to a remote server (SFTP via WinSCP), and move it into the /deploy directory (ssh, via plink).

$user_path> projects.pl

Even if you’re not using Liferay, you can probably make use of this script if you’re using ANT, SSH and SFTP. The length of the script is due to the fact that many of the functions have been broken out so that functionality can be turned on/off very quickly, but that should make re-purposing it very easy.

Prerequisites:
ActiveState Perl
Putty (and plink.exe)
WinSCP
BWright.rar
Batch File¹

Perl: projects.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;
use BWright::DateTime;
use BWright::Clipboard;
#Download BWright from http://localhost/resources/BWright.rar
#There are a lot of dependencies if you use the other pm files in BWright.rar.

## GLOBALS
$user = 'YOUR_USERNAME';
$pass = 'YOUR_PASSWORD';

# INCOMING ARGUMENTS (> deployment.pl tail 106)  
$arg = $ARGV[0];
$arg2 = $ARGV[1];
$arg3 = $ARGV[2];

# BEGIN PROCESSING
$start_time = time;
&setClip($pass); ## SET YOUR PASSWORD IN THE CLIPBOARD
if ($arg =~ /tail/) {
    &doTail($arg2, $arg3);
} elsif ($arg =~ /plink/) {
    &plink($arg3, $arg2); #command, #server
} else {
    &loadProjectXML();
}

## FINISH
print "nTasks Completen";

$end_time = time;
$elapsed_time = $end_time - $start_time;
print "nnElapsed time for all operations: $elapsed_time secondsn";
exit;
# END PROCESSING 

sub loadProjectXML() {

    my $xml = new XML::Simple (KeyAttr=>[]);
    my $data = $xml->XMLin("projects.xml");

    foreach $e (@{$data->{project}}) {
        # PROJECT ATTRIBUTES
        my $project = $e->{content}; #PROJECT NAME (Content of Project Node)
        my $deploy = $e->{deploy};
        my $server = $e->{server};
        my $rm_only = $e->{rm_only};

        my $batch = $e->{batch};
        my $local = $e->{p1};
        my $remote = $e->{p2};

        if ($deploy eq "yes") {
            if ($rm_only eq "yes") { ## Simply Remove the Context
                print "Removing Context for $project on $server. No deployment scheduled.n";
                &remoteDelete($project, $remote, $server)
            } else { ##Build and Deploy
                print "nn----------------nDEPLOYING: ".uc $project." ON SERVER $servern----------------nn";
                &deployment($project, $batch, $server, $local, $remote);
            }
        } else {
            print "Skipped: ".$server." for ".$project."n";
        }
    }

    #VIEW OBJECT
    #print Dumper($data);
}

sub deployment($project, $batch_name, $server, $local, $remote) {
    my ($project, $batch_name, $server, $local, $remote) = @_;

    print "Removing contextsn";
    &remoteDelete($project, $remote, $server);

    #print "Syncing System Timen";
    #&updateSystemTime($server);

    print "Building Projectn";
    &buildProject($batch_name);

    print "Uploadingn";
    &winscp($project.'-5.2.0.1.war', $local, $server); #$file = project name

    #$delay = 1;
    #print "Copying to /deploy in $delay second(s)n";
    #sleep $delay;
    &remoteMove($project.'-5.2.0.1.war', $remote, $server); #file = project name

    #&cleanWarDirectory($server);

    return 1;
}

sub plink($command, $server, $capture)  {
    my ($command, $server, $capture) = @_;
    #DEFAULT FIRST 3 OCTETS OF IP SET IN COMMAND
    my $system_command = 'plink -t -pw '.$pass.' '.$user.'@XX.XX.XX.'.$server.' "'.$command.'"'; #USING BATCH COMMANDS INLINE (PLINK.EXE)

    if ($capture == 1) {
        return `$system_command`;
    } else {
        system $system_command;
    }
    #print $system_command."n";

    return 1;
}

sub winscp($project, $local, $server)  {
    my ($project, $local, $server) = @_;
    #/console launches the pop-up window with transfer stats
    #/command is like -batch, quiet operation
    my $system_command = 'winscp.exe /command "option batch on" "option confirm off" "open '.$user.':'.$pass.'$@XX.XX.XX.'.$server.'" "option transfer binary" "cd war" "put C:pathprojects\'.$local.'dist\'.$project.'" "close" "exit"';
    system $system_command;
    return 1;
}

sub remoteMove($project, $remote, $server) {
    my ($project, $remote, $server) = @_;

    #PWD the DEPLOY directory
    my $directory = "/server_path/${remote}/deploy/";

    #COPY THEMES from my WAR directory to DEPLOY!
    my $cmd = "echo '$pass' | sudo -S cp ~/war/$project ${directory}${project}";
    #print $cmd."n";
    &plink("$cmd", $server);

    #CHMOD permissions on EVERYTHING in DEPLOY
    $cmd = "echo '$pass' | sudo -S chmod 777 ${directory}*";
    #print $cmd."n";
    &plink("$cmd", $server);

    #LS the files in the DEPLOY directory
    $cmd  = "echo '$pass' | sudo -S ls -l $directory";
    #print $cmd."n";
    &plink("$cmd", $server);

    return 1;
};

sub remoteDelete($project, $remote, $server) {
    my ($project, $remote, $server) = @_;

    $cmd = "echo '$pass' | sudo rm -rf /server_path/${remote}/tomcat/webapps/$project";
    #print $cmd."n";
    &plink("$cmd", $server);

    $cmd = "echo '$pass' | sudo rm -rf /server_path/${remote}/tomcat/work/Catalina/localhost/$project";
    #print $cmd."n";
    &plink("$cmd", $server);

    return 1;
}

sub cleanWarDirectory($server) {
    my ($server) = @_;
    print "nCleaning up war directory on $servern";
    &plink("sudo rm -rf ~/war/*", $server);
    return 1;
}

sub buildProject($batch_name) {
    my ($batch_name) = @_;
    my $system_call = "$batch_name & ant clean war"; #USING BATCH COMMANDS INLINE
    print "nn----------------nBuilding project: ".uc $batch_name."n----------------nn";
    #print $system_call;
    system $system_call;
    return 1;
}

sub doTail($server, $remote) {
    my ($server, $remote) = @_;
    my $otd;
    #if (($remote eq "SOMEEXAMPLE")&&($server eq "106")) {$otd = '.'.&getYear().'-'.&getMonth(2).'-'.&getDay(3);} #CREATING A FILENAME DATE, IF NECESSARY
    &plink("sudo tail -f  /server_path/$remote/tomcat/logs/catalina.out$otd; ".'$SHELL'." -i", $server);
    return 1;
}

sub updateSystemTime($server) {
    my ($server) = @_;
    my $new_hour = &plink('date +%H', $server, 1);
    chomp $new_hour;
    my $new_minute = &plink('date +%M', $server, 1);
    chomp $new_minute;
    $new_hour -= 2;
    system "time $new_hour:$new_minute:00.0";
    print "Time set to: $new_hour:$new_minute:00.0; Synced with $servern";
    return 1;
}

The perl script reads in an xml file which contains various projects and the relative settings.
projects.xml

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<projects>

<!--     TIPS:
        Search and Replace to mass-edit Options
        Create batch files in your ENV Path so that you can quickly navigate to project directories.
            These batch files are used by projects.pl for executing ant, clean, war.
-->

        <!-- STG 90 -->
    <project deploy='no' batch='some' server='90' p1='somepath' p2='someotherpath' rm_only='no'>some-theme</project>
    <project deploy='no' batch='sometpl' server='90' p1='somepath' p2='someotherpath' rm_only='no'>some-layouttpl</project>

    <!-- QA 30 -->
    <project deploy='no' batch='some' server='30' p1='somepath' p2='someotherpath' rm_only='no'>some-theme</project>
    <project deploy='no' batch='sometpl' server='30' p1='somepath' p2='someotherpath' rm_only='no'>some-layouttpl</project>
</projects>

¹Configure your Windows Environment Path variable to include a directory designated for custom batch scripts. Since I commonly navigate into multiple SDK projects throughout the day – often via the command line – I use short-named batch scripts that CD into the plugin directories for me. The batch files are literally nothing but a CD line. I have one other custom batch file called pop.bat, which opens the current directory in explorer, making it very easy to get access to different projects quite quickly.

²If some limiting options have not been set – the script also accepts options for tailing a remote log and sending simple SSH commands.