heroku-deploy-rails is a short shell script that I use to deploy my Rails projects to Heroku.
Copy deploy.sh into your Rails project, and commit it. Then rename the
git remote for your production app to "production":
$ git remote rename heroku production
The reason you need to do this is that deploy.sh will only make
backups of your Postgres database when deploying to a remote called
"production". If you'd rather call your remote something else, just edit
the script.
You'll also want to enable backups on your app, if you haven't already.
$ heroku addons:add pgbackups:auto-month
If you haven't already added a second heroku app to serve as your
staging environment, I'd heartily recommend it (but it is optional as
far as deploy.sh goes).
It automates two things for me:
- It takes a backup of the production database before the deployment.
- It runs migrations after the code has been pushed.
It also shows you which commits you're about to deploy, and gives you the option to confirm/abort.
All the Heroku deployment tools that I've seen to date are written in Ruby. There's nothing wrong with writing jobs that are best handled by a shell script in Ruby, unless you want to hang around while it starts up and want to trawl through a load of unnecessary boilerplate to discover what's really going on.
Some of them are written in Rake. WTF? That's not what Rake is for; it's for resolving dependencies. It's a build tool. Yes, that's right - the clue is in the name - Rake is like Make, which explains why it doesn't support command line arguments or switches. But whatever. If you like smashing yourself in the face with a blunt instrument, be my guest. ;-)
Shell scripting. You've got to love it. Mr Tomayko knows what he's about, so if you don't believe me, believe him instead.