Deploying Rails from a Window Machine

Question

I'm starting rails and just finished my first rails app (as far as I can tell). Now I'm at the deployment stage and am very confused - especially because I am deploying from a Windows machine.

I bought a pragmatic deployment book, and it seems a bit dated because they recommend subversion instead of Git.

What will be the easiest deployment method these days for someone who is doomed to use windows? Are there any good modern deployment tutorials from Windows?

Answer 1

It is best now to use mod_rails on your server and deploy using the Capistrano tool. Capistrano is compatible with windows, and I use it in windows all the time.

Here is a guide that explains how to configure and use both tools: http://cjohansen.no/en/rails/multi_staging_environment_for_rails_using_capistrano_and_mod_rails

If you need an even simpler setup, select http://www.heroku.com . This is a great Rails hosting company, and they provide a great set of tools to configure and deploy your rail applications on their server. It's free to get started, but you will need to pay a little if your site grows. They are 100% Windows compatible, as the deployment basically consists of you clicking on the git repository on your server.

Good luck

Answer 2

If you indicate your specific problems, it may be easier to help. If you want to reassure, here is one; I use Windows to develop Rails, and I did not have any serious problems (ban on the lack of support for some gems).

To interact with the Git repository, I use this Windows client

Answer 3

Capistrano is a fairly standard deployment management method for a Rails application. It has been a while, but IIRC Capistrano has some problems with working in Windows in some situations (related to ssh). If you can configure Cygwin on your Windows, this should make things a little easier. Assuming you are deploying a Unix / Linux environment, it doesn't matter if you use git or svn as far as your local development environment is concerned. The server side of Capistrano (actually only a remote shell) is responsible for connecting to your git repository and extracting it to the deployment environment.

Another good option you can explore is to run Linux inside VirtualBox or VMWare on your Windows machine; In general, I believe that developing Ruby / Rails will be more difficult when working in a unix environment.