Drush - Drupal Shell utility

Drush is a command line Unix scripting interface for interacting with Drupal. It makes everyday site administration and repetitive development tasks faster and easier. It is not, however, a module, and does not install like one either, so pay attention to the installation instructions found in the project's README file.

Like most arcane command line utilities, Drush becomes incredibly powerful and useful to you only after you gain an understanding of what it can do. Most people don't comprehend what Drush is capable of because they've never downloaded it and played around with it. Take a look at a copy of the current help text below which outlines some of the many tasks that Drush can automate for you -- the same thing you'd see by typing "drush help" into the command line -- and you'll begin to see why you need to be using this amazing set of shell scripts for all your Drupal site tasks:

Available Drush Commands:

help

Print this help message. Use --filter to limit command list to one command file (e.g. --filter=pm)

cron

Run all cron hooks.

updatedb

Execute the update.php process from the command line

status

Provides a birds-eye view of the current Drupal installation, if any.

cache clear

Clear all caches.

watchdog show

Shows recent watchdog log messages. Optionally filter for a specific type.

watchdog delete

Delete all messages or only those of a specified type.

sync

Rsync the Drupal tree to/from another server using ssh.

eval

Evaluate arbitrary php code after bootstrapping Drupal.

script

Runs the given php script(s) after a full Drupal bootstrap. NOTE: you can't supply absolute paths to the script e.g. ~/Desktop/script.php won't work Desktop/script.php will

enable

Enable one or more modules.

disable

Disable one or more modules.

uninstall

Uninstall one or more modules.

statusmodules

Show module enabled/disabled status

refresh

Refresh update status information

updatecode

Update your project code. Moves existing project files to the backup directory specified in the config.

update

Update your project code and apply any database updates required (update.php)

info

Release information for a project

dl

Download core Drupal and projects like CCK, Zen, etc.

test mail

Run all tests and mail the results to your team.

test clean

Delete leftover tables and files from prior test runs.

sql conf

Print database connection details.

sql connect

A string for connecting to the DB.

sql dump

Exports the Drupal DB as SQL using mysqldump.

sql query

Execute a query against the site database.

sql load

Copy source database to target database.

sql cli

Open a SQL command-line interface using Drupal’s credentials.

Even more in depth command-specific help is available by typing drush help {command} but hopefully the above list will give you a taste of what is possible with Drush.

Extensions

Other modules provide new drush commands! These become available automatically and are listed when you run drush help. The extension module does not need to be enabled.

Tips

Drush autodetects the appropriate site from directory context, and read its configs from there, so if your command shell is in {drupaldir}/sites/all or anywhere under {drupaldir} then drush commands will apply to your default install. If you move your shell session into {drupaldir}/sites/mysite, then drush commands will be run in the context of the mysite multisite instance. You can always run drush status to check the currently active context.

Example Commands

drush dl cck zen

Download current recommended versions of CCK module and Zen theme.

drush enable content

Enable the content (cck) module.

drush --uri=http://example.com status

Show status command for the example.com multi-site.

drush info backup_migrate

Get info on all available releases for backup_migrate.module, e.g.

Project         Release      Date       
backup_migrate  6.x-2.x-dev  2009-Apr-07
backup_migrate  6.x-1.2      2009-Jan-18
backup_migrate  6.x-1.0      2008-Aug-14
backup_migrate  6.x-1.x-dev  2009-Feb-19

drush -v  dl backup_migrate-6.x-1 --package-handler=cvs

Checkout via CVS, the current stable version of the backup_migrate module on the DRUPAL-6--1 branch into your sites/{active.site}/modules/ directory. In this case the result is identical with just drush dl backup_migrate --package-handler=cvs as the requested version is the recommended version.

drush -v  dl backup_migrate-6.x-2.x-dev --package-handler=cvs

Checkout via CVS, the unstable dev version of the backup_migrate module on the DRUPAL-6--2 branch into your sites/{active.site}/modules/ directory.

drush -v  dl backup_migrate-6.x-2.x-dev

Without specifying a --package-handler, (the default) the project bundle is retrieved via wget, and unpacked locally without the CVS information. This may overwrite any local changes.

See also: Offsite blog tutorial (with pictures) on Installing and running drush on OSX by morten