deprec - Deployment Recipes for Capistrano
Introduction
The deprec [1] gem is a set of tasks for Capistrano [2]. These tasks provide for the installation, configuration and control of system services. Deprec was created in 2006 by Mike Bailey to setup an environment for running Ruby on Rails web applications on Ubuntu dapper servers. Since then its uses have grown to installing mail, monitoring, high availability IP failover and other services.
The tasks are run at the command line on your workstation and connect to remote servers via ssh to run commands and copy out files.
Deprec-2.x is a complete rewrite of the project that achieves the following:
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support for Capistrano 2
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support for more services (heartbeat, nagios, nginx, ntp, postfix, etc)
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creation of a standard base set of task names
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tasks are cleanly separated into namespaced units (one file per service)
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service config files are stored locally to enable edits and version control
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interactive prompting for missing config values
One idea that is in the trash can is supporting other distros/OS’s. While I got caught up in the excitement of The Big Rewrite I’ve decided I don’t need it. If you want to deploy to something other than Ubuntu I suggest you look for other alternatives.
Deprec and Capistrano are written in the Ruby programming language [3] however no knowledge of Ruby is required to use it. Users should be able to write new tasks and modify existing options without prior knowledge of Ruby.
Installation
Deprec can be obtained from rubyforge and installed using rubygems.
sudo gem install deprec # installs deprec and dependancies cap depify . # creates ~/.caprc which you may edit cap -T # should list lots of deprec tasks
The .caprc file is loaded every time you use Capistrano. It in turn loads the deprec tasks so you always have them available. Editing the .caprc file in your home directory allows you to specify the location of your ssh key and enable some other useful options (documented in the comments). You can also put tasks here that you want to always have access to.
Getting a Ruby on Rails app running on a fresh Ubuntu server
This is still what brings people to deprec. You can install a full Rails stack and get multiple apps running on it in much less time than it would take to do it manually. Think an hour vs. a weekend. (The irony is I’m up writing this on a Saturday night.)
export HOSTS=<target.host.name>
# Install Rails stack cap deprec:rails:install_rails_stack
# Install mysql (if it’s running on the same box) cap deprec:mysql:install cap deprec:mysql:config_gen cap deprec:mysql:config
# Install your Rails app cap deploy:setup cap deploy cap deprec:db:create cap deprec:db:migrate cap deprec:nginx:restart cap deprec:mongrel:restart
You can find documentation on the deprec site. www.deprec.org/
Installing other things
I plan to document other things I use deprec for on www.deprec.org/. Feel free to poke around and see what’s there. I use deprec to provision and manage servers so you might find some things in there I haven’t documented. Lucky you.
Disclaimer
The tasks run commands that may make changes to your workstation and remote server. You are advised to read the source and use at your own risk.
Credits
Deprec is written and maintained by Mike Bailey <[email protected]>. More about me here: [mike.bailey.net.au/]
Deprec was inspired and uses the brilliantly executed Capistrano. Thanks Jamis! This gem includes a modified copy of Neil Wilson’s very useful vmbuilder_plugins gem.
Thanks
Eric Harris-Braun: great testing, bug reports and suggestions Gus Gollings: helped restore www.deprec.org Craig Ambrose: testing, documentation and beer
License
Deprec is licenced under the GPL. This means that you can use it in commercial or open source applications. More details found here: www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
deprec - deployment recipes for capistrano Copyright © 2006-2008 Mike Bailey
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
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