gitflow: a Capistrano recipe for git deployment using tags in a multistage environment.¶ ↑

The best thing about this recipe is that there is almost nothing to learn – your cap deploy process barely changes. Gitflow simply adds some tagging/logging/workflow magic.

# BEFORE
$ cap deploy              # 'master' goes to staging
$ cap production deploy   # 'master' goes to production

# AFTER
$ cap deploy                                                          
# 'master' goes to staging; tag staging-YYYY-MM-DD.X created
$ cap production deploy
# deploys latest staging tag, or if last tag is a production tag then that, to production
# for specifying the tag by hand add `-s tag=staging-YYYY-MM-DD-X-user-description`
# tag 'staging-YYYY-MM-DD-X' goes to production
# tag 'production-YYYY-MM-DD-X' created; points to staging-YYYY-MM-DD-X

# BONUS
cap gitflow:commit_log              
# displays a commit log pushed to staging
# ... alternatively, if you're using GitHub, will open a page using branch compare
cap production gitflow:log_log   
# displays a commit log of what will be pushed to production

INSTALLATION¶ ↑

First, install the gem:

gem install capistrano-gitflow

Then update config/deploy.rb

require 'capistrano/ext/multistage'
require 'capistrano/gitflow' # needs to come after multistage

DETAILS¶ ↑

After experimenting with several workflows for deployment in git, I’ve finally found one I really like.

You can push to staging at any time; every staging push is automatically tagged with a unique tag.
You can only push a staging tag to production. This helps to enforce QA of all pushes to production.

PUSH TO STAGING¶ ↑

Whenever you want to push the currently checked-out code to staging, just do:

cap staging deploy

gitflow will automatically:

create a unique tag in the format of ‘staging-YYYY-MM-DD.X’
configure multistage to use that tag for the deploy
push the code and tags to the remote “origin”
and run the normal deploy task for the staging stage.

PUSH TO PRODUCTION:¶ ↑

Whenever you want to push code to production, you must specify the staging tag you wish to promote to production:

cap production deploy -s tag=staging-2009-09-08.2

gitflow will automatically:

alias the staging tag to a production tag like: production-2008-09-08.2
configure multistage to use that tag for the deploy
push the code and tags to the remote “origin”
and run the normal deploy task for the production stage.

NOTES:¶ ↑

you may need to wipe out the cached-copy on the remote server that cap uses when switching to this workflow; I have seen situations where the cached copy cannot cleanly checkout to the new branch/tag. it’s safe to try without wiping it out first, it will fail gracefully.
if your stages already have a “set :branch, ‘my-staging-branch’” call in your configs, remove it. This workflow configures it automatically.

CREDIT¶ ↑

Originally forked from Alan Pinstein’s git_deployment repo. Gemified and hacked by Josh Nichols. There wasn’t really a license originally, so…