Capistrano and the Rails Application Lifecycle

Tom Mornini

Marc Loy

Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

December 4, 2006

Abstract

Learn how to make your Rails deployments pain-free with Capistrano! This shortcut shows you how to use Capistrano to automate the deployment of your Rails applications. It teaches you the basics, but also goes far beyond. It shows you realistic deployment scenarios, including some with complex server farms. It includes a quick reference to Capistrano. As your Rails applications grow, it becomes increasingly important to automate deployment and to keep your development environment well organized. Capistrano is the right tool for the job, and this PDF shows you how to use it effectively.

Capistrano

Historically, supporting multiple environments with the ease that Rails and Capistrano provide has been a very difficult endeavor on all but the most mature frameworks. The result is that many web applications are developed and deployed in less than ideal circumstances. Indeed, the mere development of web applications is fraught with pitfalls and difficulties.

Ruby on Rails has done a remarkable job of shifting the innate complexity of a mature web application away from configuration to convention. Rails handles many of the pitfalls of normal development in simple, clean, easy-to-understand ways. While admittedly not perfect in 100 percent of the cases, Ruby on Rails ...