capistrano-deploy-scm-passthrough

capistrano-deploy-scm-passthrough provides a simple passthrough SCM implementation for Capistrano. This differs from the built-in :none SCM in the following ways:

• It uses your local files directly (i.e. a checkout is essentially a no-op). The :none SCM recursively copies the current folder to a temp directory.
• It can be used with remote strategies, such as capistrano_rsync_with_remote_cache.
• CAUTION: the :passthrough SCM cannot be used with the :copy strategy, or any other strategy that relies on files being actually copied around.

You'll see the most benefit if you happen to be working with a large and/or binary-heavy repository deployed by a CI server. In fact it's a bad idea to use this gem if you are running the deploy command locally.

Simply install the gem and you're done:

gem install capistrano-deploy-scm-passthrough

No other setup is needed.

Set your :scm as follows:

set :scm, :passthrough
set :repository, '.'

For a sligtly more complicated example (and perhaps to understand why this gem was made), consider a case where Capistrano is run by a CI server such as Jenkins. Jenkins will deal with the SCM, so there is no need for Capistrano to complicate things:

deploy.rb

# Jenkins manages the SCM.
set :scm, :passthrough
set :repository, '.'
set :revision, ENV['GIT_COMMIT'] || ENV['SVN_REVISION'] || Time.now

We are also using Jenkins' environment variables to set the :revision property, which will be written into Capistrano's REVISION file. This is not 100% necessary, but is good to have so that you can check what you have deployed if necessary.

The :passthrough strategy works especially well with capistrano_rsync_with_remote_cache, allowing for quick deploys even with binary-heavy repositories. An example configuration might be:

deploy.rb

# Deploy configuration for the rsync_with_remote_cache strategy.
set :deploy_via, :rsync_with_remote_cache
set :rsync_options, '-azF --delete --delete-excluded'
set :local_cache, '.'

Note that we have set the -F option, which looks for include/exclude patterns in an .rsync-filter file. The following example works for a case where you'd only like to deploy the contents of a single folder (say, public) with the REVISION file, with everything else (including nested .svn folders) ignored.

.rsync-filter

- .svn
+ public/***
+ REVISION
- *

Copyright (c) 2013 Simo Kinnunen

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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