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Managing database.yml with Capistrano

Posted by Jeremy Voorhis Thu, 06 Jul 2006 21:43:00 GMT

At PLANET ARGON, we typically do not keep our database.yml files in subversion, leaving behind a database.yml.example file instead. This makes it easy for us to share the repository with multiple developers who work on their own conventions, or sometimes an alternate database engine. We still want to have a one-step automated deployment process, however, and ssh-ing into the server to create database.yml manually just feels a little… uncouth.

The solution? Building upon Tim’s post at “http://toolmantim.com/article/2006/5/26/setting_up_capistrano_on_segpub”, our Capistrano deployment recipe now writes database.yml after we deploy, and symlinks it to the latest release directory after we update the code. Here is the code that lets us do that:

desc "Create database.yml in shared/config" 
task :after_setup do
  database_configuration = render :template => <<-EOF
login: &login
  adapter: postgresql
  host: localhost
  port: <%= postgresql_port %>
  username: <%= user %>
  password: <%= password %>

development:
  database: <%= "#{application}_development" %>
  <<: *login

test:
  database: <%= "#{application}_test" %>
  <<: *login

production:
  database: <%= "#{application}_production" %>
  <<: *login
EOF

  run "mkdir -p #{deploy_to}/#{shared_dir}/config" 
  put database_configuration, "#{deploy_to}/#{shared_dir}/config/database.yml" 
end

desc "Link in the production database.yml" 
task :after_update_code do
  run "ln -nfs #{deploy_to}/#{shared_dir}/config/database.yml #{release_path}/config/database.yml" 
end

UPDATE

I’ve revised the code on 10 June. Use this version.