Question

I’m new to RoR. My gem does some background processing and loads a thin server so it can be checked from time to time. I need to put this on my web server using Capistrano.

Do people normally deploy gems to their servers or should the app be written in some other way?

Also is Capistrano the correct way to deploy gems?

Answer 1

I found out deploying a custom Gem is no different to any other project type. I just needed to add a new Capistrano task to my deploy.rb file so that the gem could get installed after the files get downloaded onto the server by Capsitrano. This is all I had to do.

desc "Install this gem"
task :setup_install, roles: :app do
    run "cd #{release_path} && gem build zoe.gemspec"
    run "cd #{release_path} && gem install YOUR-GEM-NAME.gem --quiet"
end
after "deploy:finalize_update", "deploy:setup_install"

desc "Uninstall this gem"
task :setup_uninstall, roles: :app do
    run "gem uninstall -x YOUR-GEM-NAME"
end
before "deploy:setup_install", "deploy:setup_uninstall"