Creating and deploying a Rails app
This documents how I create Ruby on Rails applications and deploy them to my server. I have created a bare bones apache web server that hosts ruby applications using MySQL. It also assumes you have Ruby on Rails set up on a Macbook Pro.
Server Side
User
mkdir ~/myrumbleapp
mkdir ~/myrumbleapp/www
mkdir ~/myrumbleapp/www/current
mkdir ~/myrumbleapp/logs
GIT
sudo groupadd myrumbleapp
sudo usermod -a -G myrumbleapp {USER}
cd ~/myrumbleapp
mkdir git
sudo chown {USER}.myrumbleapp git
cd git
git init --bare --shared=group
MySQL
mysql -u root -p mysql> create database myrumbleapp; mysql> use myrumbleapp; mysql> grant all on myrumbleapp.* to myrumbleapp@localhost identified by 'password';
Apache2
/etc/apache2/sites-available/myrumbleapp
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.myrumbleapp.com
ServerAlias myrumbleapp.com
DocumentRoot /home/{USER}/www.myrumbleapp.com/www/current/public
ErrorLog /home/{USER}/www.myrumbleapp.com/logs/error_log
TransferLog /home/{USER}/www.myrumbleapp.com/logs/access_log
</VirtualHost>
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/myrumbleapp /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/myrumbleapp sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Client Side
On the client
First, create a skeleton rails application. For this example, I will be using “myrumbleapp”. We will also freeze the rails version into our application. That way we never have to worry about rails versions on serverrs.
cd ~/Sites/ rails myrumbleapp cd ~/Sites/myrumbleapp rake rails:freeze:gems
/.gitignore
tmp log mkmf.log config/database.yml
Capistrano
cd ~/Sites/myrumbleapp
capify .
I use the following deploy.rb file. The important part is that it creates a link from my shared/system/config/database.yml file into the release folder. I keep the database.yml file out of GIT because it seems to be a best practice that other folks follow. Not exactly sure it is necessary with my code since I host my own GIT repos accessible only via SSH.
/config/deploy.rb
default_run_options[:pty] = true
set :application, "myrumbleapp"
set :repository, "{USER}@{SERVER.COM}:myrumbleapp/git"
set :user, "USER"
set :deploy_to, "/home/{USER}/myrumbleapp/www"
set :scm, :git
set :branch, "master"
role :web, "{SERVER.COM}"
role :app, "{SERVER.COM}"
role :db, "{SERVER.COM}", :primary => true
namespace :deploy do
desc "restart passenger"
task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
run "#{try_sudo} touch #{File.join(current_path,'tmp','restart.txt')}"
end
[:start, :stop].each do |t|
desc "#{t} task is a no-op with passenger"
task t, :roles => :app do ; end
end
desc "Symlink shared configs and folders on each release."
task :symlink_shared do
run "ln -nfs #{shared_path}/system/config/database.yml #{release_path}/config/database.yml"
end
end
after 'deploy:update_code', 'deploy:symlink_shared'
GIT
Next we will check our application into GIT version control.
git init cp config/database config/database.tmp.yml git add . git commit -m "initial checkin"
Configure the remote repository for GIT
git remote add origin {USER}@snowcaptech.com:myrumbleapp/git
Push the skeleton application to the server
git push origin master
Deploy the application
cap deploy:setup
cap deploy
cap deploy:migrations
