Billy the tool

Billy is very simple deploy application built on top of capistrano. This tool may be useful for designers and html programmers to simplify roll out process on staging server.

Billy distributes as ruby gem, requires ruby 1.8.7+ and superuser privileges in case of global system installation (not rvm).

Open your terminal ( on MacOS: ⌘ + Space, then type terminal in search bar ). When terminal window is opened:

sudo gem install billy_the_tool --no-rdoc

If everything is ok this command will ask you to provide superuser password and then install billy on your system.

• billy hello
• billy eat {url_to_billy_config_or_local_file}

billy hello will check all the system requirements and will give some helpful info. Billy will great you if all the requirements are satisfied And prompt to install otherwise.

billy eat {url_to_billy_config_or_local_file} will parse config file with specified path and save it to current folder. url_to_billy_config_or_local_file could be local file path or remote file url. During deploy process billy will check both current and home folders while looking for config file. Billy stores it's settings in file named .billyrc.

deploy_to: /var/www/
user: user
server: staging.server.com

billy my config

This command will return config settings from current folder if there wis .billyrc file, home settings from ~/.billyrc otherwise.

Billy hopes to find git repository inside your project with existing remote. You haven't say billy where your remote is. It checks for .git/config file and grabs all the remotes inside.

After config file is set up and you have pushed all the changes you've done Billy is ready to deploy.

Version 0.2.4 brings new feature about git usage: not it'll get your current branch if no one is specified in config with branch: key.

Here I will show how to download remote config file to my local folder and then deploy some project_name to staging server:

cd ~
billy eat http://staging.server.com/billy.cfg
cd project_name
billy walk project_name
open http://staging.server.com/project_name/index.html

Authorization uses ssh keys only, no password auth.

Auth process: deployer → ssh → staging server → ssh → git remote repository

This scheme requires deployer publick key to be placed on staging server and staging server publick key on remote git server.

billy my key

This command will return one of your ssh keys, id_rsa.pub by default