girvo

Does it still have the `.git` folder? If so, I'll stick to writing regular build scripts, as nice as this seems. I also want to push a snapshot of a build artifact (sort of, it's PHP after all) - not sending a few folders, sending commands to the remote server to execute, etc.

Anyone have a better way of achieving what I want that doesn't require my hacked together `build.php --deploy` script?

cheald
Capistrano is great. https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano

It's a bit much at first, but once you realize that it's basically just a build file with some handy functionality baked in, it's very useful. Here's an example of a deploy script for deploying a git repo to a single machine:

    set :application, "Project Name"
    set :repository, "[email protected]:project/project.git"
    set :use_sudo, false
    set :user, "deploy_user"
    set :shared_children, ["list", "of", "directories/to", "symlink/rather/than/copy"]
    set :copy_exclude, [".git/*"]
    set :scm, :git
    set :branch, "master"
    set :deploy_via, :remote_cache
    set :keep_releases, 5
    set :deploy_to, "/path/to/deploy/to"

    server "1.2.3.4", :app, :web, :db
Then you just run `cap deploy` and you're deploying. `cap rollback` instantly rolls back to the previous revision of your code. That deploy script keeps 5 releases and manages a symlink that points to the current release. The git repo is kept checked out, and then is updated and copied to a release directory, so you have multiple separate snapshots of your application on hand.

It's also extremely extensible; we use it to do asset pre-builds, send deployment notices to Hipchat and NewRelic, flush caches, restart background workers, and the like.