simpler alternative to Capistrano for single instance deployments?

Hi,

Just wondering if there is simpler deployment tool for Rails apps than Capistrano that is popular?

For simple single server hosted deployments, here's where my source code is, don't include these files, deploy to this path on this server type thing. To some extent I guess I'm describing something along the lines of a Ruby FTP script with some smarts perhaps...

Or is Capistrano really the only popular well known tool out there (with all it's config it just seems a bit overkill for me).

thanks

Moonshine takes Capistrano and makes it insanely easy, if you are running on an Ubuntu VPS or dedicated server (think Slicehost or similar).

I gave a talk recently at SD Ruby that is a good overview of what it does: http://jarinheit.com/a-talk-i-gave-at-sd-ruby-deploying-rails-apps

Jarin Udom Robot Mode LLC

By the way, forgot to mention that the real strength of Moonshine for simple setups is that the default configuration works amazingly well. You can go from a bare Ubuntu server with only ssh to a fully-running Rails app in around 10 minutes with maybe 5 lines of configuration.

Jarin

greghauptmann wrote:

Hi,

Just wondering if there is simpler deployment tool for Rails apps than Capistrano that is popular?

Capistrano is quite simple.

For simple single server hosted deployments, here's where my source code is, don't include these files, deploy to this path on this server type thing. To some extent I guess I'm describing something along the lines of a Ruby FTP script with some smarts perhaps...

You are pretty closely describing Capistrano. Learn to use it.

Or is Capistrano really the only popular well known tool out there (with all it's config it just seems a bit overkill for me).

It's not overkill. You don't have to use the config options that don't apply to you.

thanks

Best,

Jarin - noting it has Capistrano under the bonnet what does Moonshine add exactly? When/why would you use Moonshine (with Cap) over just Capistrano by itself? thanks Greg

Greg,

Capistrano manages the actual process of deployment. Moonshine manages ruby, apache, your database, iptables, god, cron, sphinx, gems, memchached, and just about everything else on your system, and it keeps your entire system config in version control. It plays nice with multiple rails apps on the same server, and it makes it easy to manage multiserver deployments (with separate database servers, app servers, etc). It handles anything that puppet does.

You rarely (if ever) have to actually ssh in to the server, and it's basically a one stop bulletproof way to handle server provisioning and deployment.

Jarin

P.S. Chef is another good alternative to Moonshine (as is just deploying to Heroku), but Chef is much more complex in its configuration and Heroku is awesome and simple beyond belief but it does have several limitations compared to a bare VPS box or dedicated server.