Deploy from Git using Capistrano without a hard reset?

Question

I've an issue at the moment where we are running a CMS within a site (browsercms) that lets the user upload files. However, every time I do a deploy Capistrano runs a hard reset thus nuking any uploaded files.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to prevent the hard reset, and just do a pull, or a way of moving the uploaded files elsewhere, without having to change the application code?

Answer 1

This doesn't quite meet your criteria of "without having to change the application code".

However after running into a similar issue I shifted my uploaded image from /public/images to /public/system/images the /public/system directory is not 'versioned' by each capistrano deployment so the images survive.

Could it be the capistrano 'versioning' causing the problem (instead of a git reset)?

Answer 2

cap deploy calls deploy:update and deploy:restart

deploy:update makes the versioning, copying stuff

deploy:restart does the true restart, overload it at your convenince, usually in your config/deploy.rb file

namespace :deploy do
    desc "Softly restart the server"
    task :restart, :roles => :app, :except => { :no_release => true } do
      my_own.restart_recipe
    end  
end

Answer 3

This might not be the right approach.

You should include your 'images' folder in your .gitignore and symlink the $current_release/images folder to $shared/images.

This may be done automatically on every deployment if you put in your deploy.rb:

task :link_imgs do     
  run "ln -s #{shared_path}/photos #{release_path}/photos" 
end    

after "deploy:update_code", :link_imgs

I've done the same with my CMS and it works like a charm