ship

Fast parallel file deployment to multiple hosts over SSH.

$ ship ./myapp:/usr/local/bin/myapp host1 host2 host3 host4
host1      host2      host3      host4
OK         85% 24M    OK         INS

Features

Parallel uploads - configurable concurrency with -j
MD5 skip - skip upload if remote file matches
Gzip compression - auto-enabled for large files
Verified install - MD5-check staged bytes before replacing destination
Atomic install - upload to temp, then mv into place
Sudo support - upload as user, install as root
Progress display - per-host status with transfer speed
Stall detection - fail fast if transfer hangs
Restart hook - run command after successful deploy

Install

curl -fsSL https://github.com/piranha/ship/releases/latest/download/ship-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) \
  -o ~/bin/ship && chmod +x ~/bin/ship

Or grab a binary from releases.

Note

macOS users: if you get a quarantine warning, run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/bin/ship

Usage

ship [options] <local_path:remote_dest> <host...>

Host formats

host              # use ssh config defaults
user@host         # specify user  
host:/other/path  # override dest for this host
user@host:/path   # override both

Examples

# Deploy binary to 3 hosts
ship ./myapp:/usr/local/bin/myapp web1 web2 web3

# With sudo (upload as user, mv as root)
ship --sudo ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf web1 web2

# Restart service after deploy
ship --sudo --restart "systemctl restart myapp" ./myapp:/usr/local/bin/myapp web1 web2

# Override dest per host
ship ./config:/etc/myapp/config web1:/etc/myapp/config.web1 web2

# Skip MD5 check, force upload
ship --skip-md5 ./myapp:/usr/local/bin/myapp web1

# Custom SSH options
ship --ssh-opts "-i ~/.ssh/deploy_key -o ConnectTimeout=10" ./app:/opt/app host1

Options

Option	Default	Description
`-j, --jobs <N>`	min(hosts, 8)	Max parallel uploads
`--ssh <path>`	ssh	SSH binary
`--ssh-opts <str>`	-oBatchMode=yes -oConnectTimeout=5	SSH options
`--port <port>`	-	Default SSH port
`--user <user>`	-	Default SSH user
`--skip-md5`	false	Skip pre-upload MD5 check (staged bytes are still verified)
`--compress`	auto	Force gzip compression
`--no-compress`	-	Disable compression
`--compress-level <1-9>`	1	Gzip level
`--chmod <mode>`	0755	File mode (octal)
`--no-chmod`	-	Skip chmod
`--sudo`	false	Use sudo for install
`--sudo-cmd <cmd>`	sudo -n	Sudo command
`--install-owner <u:g>`	-	Set owner:group via sudo
`--timeout <sec>`	30	SSH timeout
`--stall-timeout <sec>`	10	Fail if no progress for N sec
`--restart <cmd>`	-	Run after successful install
`--quiet`	false	No progress output
`--keep-tmp-on-fail`	false	Keep temp file on failure

Progress Display

host1      host2      host3      +2 more
OK         85% 24M    INS        +1✓ 0✗ 1↻

Percentage + speed during upload (e.g., 85% 24M = 85% done at 24 MB/s)
Status codes: OK done, SKIP md5 matched, ERR failed, INS installing, RST restarting, STALL transfer hung
Summary for overflow hosts: ✓ done/skipped, ✗ failed, ↻ running

Display auto-fits terminal width; excess hosts shown in summary.

When stdout isn’t a TTY, ship prints one line per host on completion (e.g. host1 OK). Failures are listed with messages at the end.

How It Works

MD5 check - compare local MD5 with remote (skip if match)
Upload - stream file to temp path via SSH (optionally gzipped)
Verify - require the staged file's MD5 to match before changing destination
Install - chmod + atomic mv to final dest (via sudo if enabled)
Restart - run restart command if specified

Temp file pattern: /tmp/ship.{basename}.{pid}.new

Requirements

Remote: any POSIX system with cat, mv, chmod, md5sum (or busybox equivalents)
Local: Zig 0.15+ to build

Exit Codes

0 - all hosts succeeded
1 - one or more hosts failed
2 - usage error

sansolovyov/ship

README