Capistrano Deploy for Shared Hosting with GIT Repository

Would you like to deploy your Rails apps on a shared hosting account via Capistrano? I keep a couple of small projects on A Small Orange and since I update them so infrequently, I can never remember all the steps. Duh, that’s what Capistrano was made for. So I took a night and wrote the following deployment script. There are a couple of requirements:

• Your project is in a GIT repository, local or remote.
• The GIT repository only needs to be accessible from your local machine (ASO servers do not support GIT).
• WARNING: running any part of this script will completely delete your /public_html directory!
• You only need modify the first FOUR ‘set’ lines.

A shared/system_stopped directory will be created on the server, any files in here will be served when you do a ‘cap deploy:web:disable’. You can add a ‘system_stopped’ directory to your project and those files will automatically be copied into the shared directory.

This script works best if you start from the beginning as this is a new deployment as a couple of directories need to be created:

deploy:setup
deploy:check
deploy:cold

There are a few commented out lines that you may wish to uncomment. I tried to explain their use, so you may wish to read over each function.

Lest I repeat myself… WARNING: this will completely delete your /public_html directory! Make sure you have a backup before you run any function in this script.

I plan on adding a full db backup option (run before migrations, or at will) and a production.log rotation.

set :application, "mywebapp"
set :repository,  "git@myrepository.com:mywebapp.git"
set :domain, "mywebapp.com"

# user is the login name for the shared hosting account
# it should also be the name of your home directory i.e. /home/my-user-name
set :user, "myusername"

# this will place you app outside your /public_html
# and protect your app file from exposure
set :deploy_to, "/home/#{user}/#{application}"

set :scm, :git
# set :deploy_via, :remote_cache  # if your server has direct access to the repository
set :deploy_via, :copy  # if you server does NOT have direct access to the repository (default)
set :git_shallow_clone, 1  # only copy the most recent, not the entire repository (default:1)

ssh_options[:paranoid] = false
set :use_sudo, false

set :keep_releases, 2  # only keep a current and one previous version to save space

role :app, domain
role :web, domain
role :db,  domain, :primary => true

task :update_public, :roles => [:app] do
  run "chmod 755 #{release_path}/public"
  run "chmod 755 #{release_path}/public/dispatch.*"
end
# remove the .git directory and .gitignore from the current release
task :remove_git_directories, :roles => [:app] do
  run "rm -rfd #{release_path}/.git"
  run "rm #{release_path}/.gitignore"
end
# this lets us keep the system_stopped files in project
task :copy_system_stopped_files, :roles => [:app] do
  run "cp -f #{release_path}/public/system_stopped/* #{shared_path}/system_stopped/"
end

after "deploy:update_code", :update_public
after "deploy:update_code", :copy_system_stopped_files
after "deploy:update_code", :remove_git_directories

# create a symlink from the current/public to ~/public_html
task :create_public_html, :roles => [:app] do
  run "ln -fs #{current_path}/public ~/public_html"
end
after "deploy:cold", :create_public_html

# create a directory in shared to hold files that will be servered
# when the system is stopped, and a config directory
task :create_shared_directories, :roles => [:app] do
  run "mkdir -p #{shared_path}/system_stopped"
  run "mkdir -p #{shared_path}/config"
end
after "deploy:setup", :create_shared_directories 

# remove the symlink for ~/public_html
task :remove_public_html, :roles => [:app] do
  run "rm ~/public_html"
end

# creates a symlink to ~/public_html to the shared/system_stopped directory
# places files you want served in this dir for when the system is stopped
task :create_public_html_to_stopped, :roles => [:app] do
  run "ln -fs #{shared_path}/system_stopped ~/public_html"
end

# we need to override the default start/stop/restart functions
namespace :deploy do
  desc "Restart the web server. Killing all FCGI processes."
  task :restart, :roles => :app do
    # for most hosts, all you need to do is stop all FCGI processing running
    run "killall -q dispatch.fcgi"
    # but some hosts can restart by touching the dispatch file
    #run "chmod 755 #{current_path}/public/dispatch.fcgi"
    #run "touch #{current_path}/public/dispatch.fcgi"
  end

  desc "Start the web server. Really nothing to do for shared hosting."
  task :start, :roles => :app do
    remove_public_html
    create_public_html
    deploy.restart
  end

  desc "Stop the web server and present maintenance page."
  task :stop, :roles => :app do
    remove_public_html
    create_public_html_to_stopped
  end

  namespace :web do
    desc "Make application web accessible again."
    task :enable, :roles => [:app] do
      deploy.start
    end

    desc "Present system maintenance page to users."
    task :disable, :roles => [:app] do
      deploy.stop
    end

  end
end