Run a temporary CouchDB

One nice solution to isolate tests, it to point the code to a temporary database. Below is a script to launch a new instance of CouchDB on a given port.

#!/bin/bash
# A script to run a temporary couchdb instance

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "usage: $(basename $0) PORT"
    exit 1
fi

port=$1

base=$(mktemp -d)
dbdir=$base/data
config=$base/config.ini
mkdir -p $dbdir

cat <<EOF > $config
[httpd]
port = $port

[couchdb]
database_dir = $dbdir
view_index_dir = $dbdir

[log]
file = ${base}/couch.log
EOF

trap "rm -fr $base" SIGINT SIGTERM

echo "couchdb directory is $base"
couchdb -a $config

Sourcing a shell script

Sometime you want to emulate the action of "source" in bash, settings some environment variables.
Here's one way to do it:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from os import environ

def source(script, update=1):
    pipe = Popen(". %s; env" % script, stdout=PIPE, shell=True)
    data = pipe.communicate()[0]

    env = dict((line.split("=", 1) for line in data.splitlines()))
    if update:
        environ.update(env)

    return env