Deploying a Git subdirectory in Capistrano

Question

My master branch layout is like this:

/ <-- top level

/client <-- desktop client source files

/server

Answer 1

For Capistrano 3, based on @Thomas Fankhauser answer:

set :repository,  "git@github.com:name/project.git"
set :branch, "master"
set :subdir, "relative_path_to_my/subdir"


namespace :deploy do

  desc "Checkout subdirectory and delete all the other stuff"
  task :checkout_subdir do

    subdir = fetch(:subdir)
    subdir_last_folder  = File.basename(subdir)
    release_subdir_path = File.join(release_path, subdir)

    tmp_base_folder = File.join("/tmp", "capistrano_subdir_hack")
    tmp_destination = File.join(tmp_base_folder, subdir_last_folder)

    cmd = []
    # Settings for my-zsh
    # cmd << "unsetopt nomatch && setopt rmstarsilent" 
    # create temporary folder
    cmd << "mkdir -p #{tmp_base_folder}"  
    # delete previous temporary files                
    cmd << "rm -rf #{tmp_base_folder}/*"  
    # move subdir contents to tmp           
    cmd << "mv #{release_subdir_path}/ #{tmp_destination}"   
    # delete contents inside release      
    cmd << "rm -rf #{release_path}/*"   
    # move subdir contents to release             
    cmd << "mv #{tmp_destination}/* #{release_path}" 
    cmd = cmd.join(" && ")

    on roles(:app) do
      within release_path do
        execute cmd
      end
    end
  end

end

after "deploy:updating", "deploy:checkout_subdir"

Answer 2

There is a solution. Grab crdlo's patch for capistrano and the capistrano source from github. Remove your existing capistrano gem, appy the patch, setup.rb install, and then you can use his very simple configuration line set :project, "mysubdirectory" to set a subdirectory.

The only gotcha is that apparently github doesn't "support the archive command" ... at least when he wrote it. I'm using my own private git repo over svn and it works fine, I haven't tried it with github but I imagine if enough people complain they'll add that feature.

Also see if you can get capistrano authors to add this feature into cap at the relevant bug.

Answer 3

We're also doing this with Capistrano by cloning down the full repository, deleting the unused files and folders and move the desired folder up the hierarchy.

deploy.rb

set :repository,  "git@github.com:name/project.git"
set :branch, "master"
set :subdir, "server"

after "deploy:update_code", "deploy:checkout_subdir"

namespace :deploy do

    desc "Checkout subdirectory and delete all the other stuff"
    task :checkout_subdir do
        run "mv #{current_release}/#{subdir}/ /tmp && rm -rf #{current_release}/* && mv /tmp/#{subdir}/* #{current_release}"
    end

end

As long as the project doesn't get too big this works pretty good for us, but if you can, create an own repository for each component and group them together with git submodules.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, git provides no way to do this. Instead, the 'git way' is to have two repositories -- client and server, and clone the one(s) you need.

Answer 5

For Capistrano 3.0, I use the following:

In my Capfile:

# Define a new SCM strategy, so we can deploy only a subdirectory of our repo.
module RemoteCacheWithProjectRootStrategy
  def test
    test! " [ -f #{repo_path}/HEAD ] "
  end

  def check
    test! :git, :'ls-remote', repo_url
  end

  def clone
    git :clone, '--mirror', repo_url, repo_path
  end

  def update
    git :remote, :update
  end

  def release
    git :archive, fetch(:branch), fetch(:project_root), '| tar -x -C', release_path, "--strip=#{fetch(:project_root).count('/')+1}"
  end
end

And in my deploy.rb:

# Set up a strategy to deploy only a project directory (not the whole repo)
set :git_strategy, RemoteCacheWithProjectRootStrategy
set :project_root, 'relative/path/from/your/repo'

All the important code is in the strategy release method, which uses git archive to archive only a subdirectory of the repo, then uses the --strip argument to tar to extract the archive at the right level.

UPDATE

As of Capistrano 3.3.3, you can now use the :repo_tree configuration variable, which makes this answer obsolete. For example:

set :repo_url, 'https://example.com/your_repo.git'
set :repo_tree, 'relative/path/from/your/repo' # relative path to project root in repo

See http://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/configuration.

Answer 6

I created a snipped that works with Capistrano 3.x based in previous anwers and other information found in github:

# Usage: 
# 1. Drop this file into lib/capistrano/remote_cache_with_project_root_strategy.rb
# 2. Add the following to your Capfile:
#   require 'capistrano/git'
#   require './lib/capistrano/remote_cache_with_project_root_strategy'
# 3. Add the following to your config/deploy.rb
#    set :git_strategy, RemoteCacheWithProjectRootStrategy
#    set :project_root, 'subdir/path'

# Define a new SCM strategy, so we can deploy only a subdirectory of our repo.
module RemoteCacheWithProjectRootStrategy
  include Capistrano::Git::DefaultStrategy
  def test
    test! " [ -f #{repo_path}/HEAD ] "
  end

  def check
    test! :git, :'ls-remote -h', repo_url
  end

  def clone
    git :clone, '--mirror', repo_url, repo_path
  end

  def update
    git :remote, :update
  end

  def release
    git :archive, fetch(:branch), fetch(:project_root), '| tar -x -C', release_path, "--strip=#{fetch(:project_root).count('/')+1}"
  end
end

It's also available as a Gist on Github.