Jetpack - the Jet Orchestrator

Jetpack (aka Jet) is a general-purpose, community-driven IT automation platform for configuration management, deployment, orchestration, patching, and arbitrary task execution workflows.

Jetpack is a GPLv3 licensed project, based on the original Jetporch project created and run by Michael DeHaan. (michael@michaeldehaan.net).

Links (currently outdated, will be updated soon)

• All Documentation
• Installation
• Blog and Announcements
• Discord Chat
• Contribution Guide

Please route all questions, help requests, and feature discussion to Discord. Thanks!

Universal Task Modifiers (with parameters)

Jetpack now includes a universal skip_if_exists parameter that works with ALL modules:

- !any_module
  # ... module parameters ...
  with:
    skip_if_exists: /path/to/file  # Skip task if this path exists

This is part of the with section that provides pre-execution modifiers:

• condition: Conditional execution based on expressions
• skip_if_exists: Skip task if specified path exists (NEW in Jetpack!)
• sudo: Execute with elevated privileges
• items: Loop over a list of items
• delegate_to: Execute on a different host
• subscribe: Handler subscription
• tags: Task categorization

Example:

- !unpack
  src: /tmp/archive.tar.gz
  dest: /opt/app
  with:
    skip_if_exists: /opt/app/bin/app  # Don't extract if app already exists
    sudo: root

New Modules

download module

Downloads files from URLs with atomic writes and permission management:

• url: Source URL to download from
• dest: Local destination path
• mode, owner, group: Optional file permissions
• force: Re-download even if file exists

unpack module

Extracts various archive formats:

• Supports: tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, zip, gz, bz2, xz
• src: Archive file path
• dest: Extraction destination directory
• mode, owner, group: Apply to extracted files

move module

Moves files and directories with optional backup:

• src: Source file/directory path
• dest: Destination path
• backup: Create timestamped backup if destination exists
• force: Overwrite destination
• mode, owner, group: Apply permissions after move

Technical Debt

Proper file operations in Connection trait

The current architecture forces every module to use shell commands for basic file operations. The cmd_library is just a bash string factory that returns commands like mv '{}' '{}'. This is fundamentally broken.

Current (bad) architecture:

// Module calls:
handle.remote.rename(&src, &dest)
// Which calls:
cmd_library::get_rename_command() -> "mv 'src' 'dest'"
// Which gets executed as bash

What it SHOULD be:

trait Connection {
    fn rename(&self, src: &Path, dest: &Path) -> Result<()>;
    fn copy(&self, src: &Path, dest: &Path) -> Result<()>;
    fn remove(&self, path: &Path) -> Result<()>;
    fn exists(&self, path: &Path) -> Result<bool>;
    // etc...
}

// Local uses std::fs, SSH uses commands, but modules don't care!

Every file operation should be a proper method on the Connection trait, not a bash string generator. Modules shouldn't have to know about shell escaping or command formatting.

Path handling limitations

• Tilde expansion (~) is NOT supported in paths. Use explicit paths like /home/{{ username }} instead of ~/.
• This is intentional - shell expansions can be unpredictable across different execution contexts.
• Always use absolute paths or template variables for home directories.

TODO Features

github_release module enhancements

• Improved channel semantics (DONE):
  • stable / latest: Production - stable releases only (these are synonyms, default is latest)
  • prerelease: Smart mode - gets the absolute latest version, preferring stable over RC of same version
  • unstable: Testing only - stays on prereleases even if stable exists
  • any: Latest regardless of stability
• ETag caching support: Add optional cache_etags: true parameter to enable GitHub API ETag caching
  • Store ETags in ~/.local/share/jetpack/github_etags.json
  • Send If-None-Match header to receive 304 responses that don't count against rate limits
  • Include cache expiry timestamps
  • Privacy-focused: opt-in only feature to avoid tracking user lookups
• GitHub token authentication: Add optional github_token parameter for authenticated requests (5000 req/hour vs 60)