So I've developed a rails app locally. Its awesome. It works great
and exactly how I want it to...but there is one problem....and its a
big one....
NOT ONE SITE SHOWS YOU STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS FOR DEPLOYMENT
It just boggles my mind how rails is such an "awesome" and easy to use
framework yet deploying the app is more complicated than creating the
app. Why is this? Why isn't it just a simple upload away from
working? AND why are there no STEP BY STEP instructions for making my
beatiful app work on my server???
I've found a number of them. Every single one gives a different way, every single one is not exactly what I need, and every single one is rapidly out of date. Beyond that, every single one is specific to the environment that the writer is deploying in to.
The short form is:
- You should look in to capistrano for automated deployment. Yes, the manuals are down. Yes, they are in the wayback machine and the Google cache.
- If you're using a shared host then you're likely getting apache 1.3 with fcgi or apache 2.2 with balanced mod_proxy -> mongrel. If you're using a VPS then people seem to favor the latter.
Get on the capistrano and rails-deployment mailing lists if need be.
Check out Capistrano if you need to deploy to multiple servers. Make
sure your host suports rails, rails setup in shared environments is
often site specific.
Also use Capistrano if you want to make your life easier in the long term I didn’t use Capistrano with my first apps because i didn’t feel the need to learn it at that time, that was a wrong decision
Thank you to all who replied. You all suggested Capistrano which is
cool. However, that requires knowledge of SVN and creating
repositories and other stuff that I am supposed to know about how?
Its just so furstrating that there isn't one tutorial that says it
all. It is like going to see a movie you waited to see for over a
year...and then the last five minutes of it cut out.
So I visited the *amazing* wiki on ror.org to find out more about this
subversion that is required with capistrano or whatever. I read:
HowtoUseRailsWithSubversion and think to myself, oh well this should
definitely help me out. (Please visit:
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoUseRailsWithSubversion ).
The first sentence reads: "This assumes that you have already created
a subversion repository....". So I say to myself, ok cool, I will
just google how to create this subversion supository crap. I search
"create SVN repository" which gives me back about 942,000 results.
AWESOME maybe I will be one step closer to launcing my rails app.
NOOOOOO - NOT ONE SITE on the first 20 pages helps. NOTHING. It is a
never ending cycle. The closer you get - the further you get. Why
the hell isn't this as easy as uploading. I've spent more time trying
to figure out how to deploy than it takes me to develop my damn app.
I understand your frustration, that's why I created a cap deploy how to, I
found there were just steps missing that anyone new to rails /svn or
deployment in general would overlook
It took me a whole weekend to come to realize that cap wouldn't work on a
non-posix shell, but that's not mentioned anywhere!
Amr Malik cleaned up my how to and posted it here:
As you move from building your app to deploying and maintaining it,
tools such as Subversion move from "Why would I even care about this?"
to "This could be useful" to "How did I live without it?" in a very
short period. If you're not across Subversion (and/or similar
revision control tools), then it's absolutely worth spending the time
to do so.
Furthermore, if you're working in Windows with Subversion, you'll
probably want to check out TortoiseSVN. Once you've got your
Subversion repository happening, TortoiseSVN hides all Subversion's
complexity and lets you get on with doing your work.
With respect to Capistrano, it's linked closely to Subversion because
the guy who originally developed it happened to use Subversion.
Thank you to all who replied. You all suggested Capistrano which is
cool. However, that requires knowledge of SVN and creating
repositories and other stuff that I am supposed to know about how?
Its just so furstrating that there isn't one tutorial that says it
all. It is like going to see a movie you waited to see for over a
year...and then the last five minutes of it cut out.
So I visited the *amazing* wiki on ror.org to find out more about this
subversion that is required with capistrano or whatever. I read:
HowtoUseRailsWithSubversion and think to myself, oh well this should
definitely help me out. (Please visit:
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoUseRailsWithSubversion ).
The first sentence reads: "This assumes that you have already created
a subversion repository....". So I say to myself, ok cool, I will
just google how to create this subversion supository crap. I search
"create SVN repository" which gives me back about 942,000 results.
AWESOME maybe I will be one step closer to launcing my rails app.
NOOOOOO - NOT ONE SITE on the first 20 pages helps. NOTHING. It is a
never ending cycle. The closer you get - the further you get. Why
the hell isn't this as easy as uploading. I've spent more time trying
to figure out how to deploy than it takes me to develop my damn app.
Umm, I just posted this in response to another query.. I'd recommend you take a look at the guide that comes with the TortoiseSVN - it extracts bits and pieces from the SVN Book but since it also talks about a specific tool, it's more tangible at parts and explains some of the stuff that people take from granted when they write about SVN. For example, you'll find that everyone says that you use a structure like trunk, branches and tags. But for an absolute newbie, it's a bit confusing about what *you* have to do to create the initial repository layout. By chance or design, the TortoiseSVN guid discusses it
FWIW, It's quick to read through also... you can relatively quickly learn enough to start using SVN on a daily basis (and it's really easy to use TortoiseSVN if you're on Windows) and benefit from it - at some later point, you'll need to read more to understand some of the more advanced features.
Someone (rubaidah.com ??) also has a script that does the job of creating a basic layout of a Rails project in Subversion when you want to create a new project. Sorry, I don't have the link at hand, but I'm sure you should be able to ask Google.
Hope this helps you on the Subversion side of things!
Cheers
Mohit.
I didn’t use Capistrano with my first apps because i didn’t feel the need to learn it at that time, that was a wrong decision 