Capistrano is a utility and framework for executing commands in parallel on multiple remote machines, via SSH. It uses a simple DSL (borrowed in part from Rake) that allows you to define tasks, which may be applied to machines in certain roles. It also supports tunneling connections via some gateway machine to allow operations to be performed behind VPN's and firewalls.
Capistrano was originally designed to simplify and automate deployment of web applications to distributed environments, and originally came bundled with a set of tasks designed for deploying Rails applications.
If you want to run the tests, you'll also need to install the dependencies with
Bundler, see the Gemfile within .
Capistrano is "opinionated software", which means it has very firm ideas about how things ought to be done, and tries to force those ideas on you. Some of the assumptions behind these opinions are:
- You are using SSH to access the remote servers.
- You either have the same password to all target machines, or you have public keys in place to allow passwordless access to them.
Do not expect these assumptions to change.
In general, you'll use Capistrano as follows:
- Create a recipe file ("capfile" or "Capfile").
- Use the
capscript to execute your recipe.
Use the cap script as follows:
cap sometask
By default, the script will look for a file called one of capfile or
Capfile. The someaction text indicates which task to execute. You can do
"cap -h" to see all the available options and "cap -T" to see all the available
tasks.
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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