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https://github.com/iain/roundsman

Combines Capistrano with Chef Solo
https://github.com/iain/roundsman

capistrano chef-solo

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Combines Capistrano with Chef Solo

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README 

        
# Roundsman



This is an attempt to combine the powers of [Capistrano](http://capify.org) and

[chef-solo](http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Chef+Solo).



The only thing you need is SSH access and a supported OS. At this time only

Ubuntu is supported.



## Introduction



You can skip this if you already know about Capistrano and Chef.



Installing servers can be tedious work. Keeping your configuration in sync can

be hard too. Chef is an excellent tool for managing this. It can provision your

server from scratch. It can also be run again and again to check and update

your configuration if needed.



Capistrano is an excellent tool for deployment. It can deploy your code on

multiple machines, with clever defaults, limited downtime and the ability to

quickly roll back your deployment if something has gone wrong.



Roundsman aims to integrate Capistrano and Chef. This means that with every

deploy, it can check and update your configuration if needed. Are you using a

new version of Ruby in your next release? It will automatically install when

you deploy! Adding a new machine to your cluster? No problem! Roundsman will go

from a bare bones Linux machine to a working server in minutes!



Before you can use Roundsman, you need to know how to use Capistrano and how to

write Chef recipes. Here are some resources you might want to check out:



* [Capistrano's homepage](http://capify.org)

* [Opscode, the company behind Chef](http://www.opscode.com)

* [The wiki page on Chef Solo](http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Chef+Solo)

* [The wiki page on creating Chef recipes](http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Resources)

* [Railscast on Chef Solo](http://railscasts.com/episodes/339-chef-solo-basics) (paid)

* [Railscast on Capistrano Tasks](http://railscasts.com/episodes/133-capistrano-tasks-revised)

* [Railscast on digging deeper into Capistrano](http://railscasts.com/episodes/337-capistrano-recipes) (paid)



Feeling comfortable you can tackle deploying your application with Capistrano

and Chef? Now you can use Roundsman to combine them.



## Installing



Roundsman runs on Ruby 1.8.7 and above.



If you're using Bundler, you can add Roundsman to your Gemfile:



``` ruby

# Gemfile



gem 'roundsman', :require => false

```



Run `bundle install` to get it.



If you're not using Bundler, you can install Roundsman by hand:



``` bash

$ gem install roundsman

```



And "capify" your project:



``` bash

$ capify .

```



Next, load Roundsman in `Capfile`



``` ruby

# Capfile



require 'roundsman/capistrano'

```



## Usage



By default, Roundsman assumes you put your Chef cookbooks inside

`config/cookbooks`. If you don't like this, see the

[Configuration](#Configuration) chapter. But here we're going to use that.



I'm also going to assume that you put all Capistano configuration inside

`config/deploy.rb`. When you have a lot of configuration or use the multistage

extension, you might want to place it elsewhere.



After configuring Capistrano and writing and downloading Chef recipes, you can

hook them up, with a Capistrano hook. Simply provide provide a run list. Let's

say you want to run the default recipe of your own cookbook, called `main`.



``` ruby

# config/deploy.rb



before "deploy:update_code" do

  roundsman.run_list "recipe[main]"

end

```



I'm hooking it up before the `update_code` command, and not before `deploy` so

it will also run when running `cap deploy:migrations`.



Setting up a webserver usually requires that you have the code already there;

otherwise restarting nginx or Apache will fail, because it cannot find your

application yet. To remedy that you can make another recipe that will configure

your webserver and have it run after deploying your new code:



``` ruby

# config/deploy.rb



after "deploy:create_symlink" do

  roundsman.run_list "recipe[main::webserver]"

end

```



If you want a recipe to only run on a specific role, you can do so like this:



``` ruby

# config/deploy.rb



namespace :install do

  task :postgres, :roles => [:db] do

    roundsman.run_list "recipe[main::postgres]"

  end

end



before "deploy:update_code", "install:postgres"

```



## Configuration



By default, Roundsman will make a lot of Capistrano's configuration available to chef.



So, you might have these settings:



``` ruby

# config/deploy.rb



set :application, "my-awesome-blog"

set :rails_env, "production"

set :deploy_to, "/var/www/#{application}-#{rails_env}"

set :user, "deployer"

```



Here's how you can use them inside your recipes:



``` ruby

# config/cookbooks/main/recipes/default.rb



directory File.join(node[:deploy_to], "uploads") do

  owner node[:user]

  owner node[:user]

  recursive true

end

```



Every configuration option from Capistrano is available in Chef. If your using

the [passenger_apache2](https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/passenger_apache2)

cookbook for example, you can set the attributes like this:



``` ruby

# config/deploy.rb



set :passenger, :version => "3.0.12", :max_pool_size => 4

```



There are also a set of configuration options for Roundsman itself. They all

have sensible defaults, but you can override them if needed. To read all the

default configuration:



``` bash

$ cap roundsman:configuration

```



You can also perform a lot of tasks by hand if you need to. Here's how to get

information:



``` bash

$ cap --tasks roundsman

```



To get more information, use the `--explain` flag and specify a task name, like

this:



``` bash

$ cap --explain roundsman:install_ruby

```



## How does it work?



What Roundsman does is this:



It will determine if you have the right version of Ruby installed. Your machine

might already have an older version of Ruby installed, so if it needs to, it

will use [ruby-build](https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build) to install the

version of Ruby you need for your application.



Then, it will install check the version of chef-solo and install or upgrade as

needed.



It will then copy over the cookbooks from your local machine to your deployment

machine. This means that you don't need to commit every change while you're still

working on it.



It will create your node.json file based upon your Capistrano configuration and

run the recipes needed.



This is all done in Capistrano hooks, using Capistrano methods like `run`, so

you can determine when and how your recipes are run.



## Tips



### Colors



Capistrano and Chef both give a lot of output. Check out

[capistrano_colors](https://github.com/stjernstrom/capistrano_colors)

to colorize your output for better readability.



### Vagrant



If you want to test out your configuration locally, you should take a look at

[Vagrant](http://vagrantup.com). It makes managing a VirtualBox a breeze. You

can even create a stage just for Vagrant with the Capistrano multistage

extension.



## Contributing



If you want to help out, please! Create an issue or do a pull request and I

will take a look at it.



To get this project up and running, make sure you have VirtualBox, because we

use vagrant. Then all you need to do is:



``` bash

bundle install

rake

```