What is Capistrano?

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows. A remote server automation and deployment tool written in Ruby.

A Simple Task

role :demo, %w{example.com example.org example.net}
task :uptime do
  on roles(:demo), in: :parallel do |host|
    uptime = capture(:uptime)
    puts "#{host.hostname} reports: #{uptime}"
  end
end

Capistrano extends the Rake DSL with methods specific to running commands on() servers.

For Any Language

Capistrano is written in Ruby, but it can easily be used to Deploy any language.

If your language or framework has special deployment requirements, Capistrano can easily be extended to support them.

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool

It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Capistrano can be used to:

• Reliably Deploy web application to any number of machines simultaneously, in sequence or as a rolling set.
• To automate audits of any number of machines (checking login logs, enumerating uptimes, and/or applying security patches).
• To script arbitrary workflows over SSH.
• To automate common tasks in software teams.
• To drive infrastructure provisioning tools such as chef-solo, Ansible or similar.

Capistrano is also very scriptable, and can be integrated with any other Ruby software to form part of a larger tool.

What else is in the box?

There’s lots of cool stuff in the Capistrano toy box:

• Interchangeable output formatters (progress, pretty, HTML, etc).
• Easy to add support for other source control management software.
• A rudimentary multi-console for running Capistrano interactively.
• Host and Role filters for partial deploys, or partial-cluster maintenance.
• Recipes for the Rails asset pipelines, and database migrations.
• Support for complex environments.
• A sane, expressive API:

desc "Show off the API"
task :ditty do

  on roles(:all) do |host|
    # Capture output from the remote host, and re-use it
    # we can reflect on the `host` object passed to the block
    # and use the `info` logger method to benefit from the
    # output formatter that is selected.
    uptime = capture('uptime')
    if host.roles.include?(:web)
      info "Your webserver #{host} has uptime: #{uptime}"
    end
  end

  on roles(:app) do
    # We can set environmental variables for the duration of a block
    # and move the process into a directoy, executing arbitrary tasks
    # such as letting Rails do some heavy lifting.
    with({:rails_env => :production}) do
      within('/var/www/my/rails/app') do
        execute :rails, :runner, 'MyModel.something'
      end
    end
  end

  on roles(:db) do
    # We can even switch users, provided we have support on the remote
    # server for switching to that user without being prompted for a
    # passphrase.
    as 'postgres' do
      widgets = capture "echo 'SELECT * FROM widgets;' | psql my_database"
      if widgets.to_i < 50
        warn "There are fewer than 50 widgets in the database on #{host}!"
      end
    end
  end

  on roles(:all) do
    # We can even use `test` the way the Unix gods intended
    if test("[ -d /some/directory ]")
      info "Phew, it's ok, the directory exists!"
    end
  end
end

official capistranorb.com


src stackshare.io/capistrano