Capistrano 3 pulling command line arguments

Question

I'm in the process of upgrading from Capistrano 2 to Capistrano 3. In Cap 2 I was using the following to take a command line argument as the branch name (otherwise default to master)

set :branch, fetch(:branch, "master")

If I called cap deploy it would deploy the master branch. But it also let me do something like this:

cap deploy -S branch=foo

Which would deploy the foo branch.

Now, in Capistrano 3, if I try to run the above I get an error: invalid option: -S.

What's the proper way to pass an argument via the command line now?

I found [this discussion](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/capistrano/-MWCt9faKz4) but no resolution that I could tell. — Brad Dwyer, Jan 09 '14 at 18:31

score 40 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 09 '14 at 18:51

40

What I ended up doing was setting an ENV variable.

So now I can call

cap production deploy branch=mybranch

And it will deploy mybranch. If I run a simple cap production deploy it will deploy the default branch (master if you don't set one, but I've changed mine below to default to demonstrate)

This is the code I put in my deploy.rb file:

set :branch, "default"
if ENV['branch']
        set :branch, ENV['branch']
end

answered Jan 09 '14 at 18:51

Brad Dwyer

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15

To make it DRY, `set :branch, ENV['branch'] || 'default'` – Koen. Mar 26 '14 at 12:29
1

Env vars are for global settings (like login, or changing some deaults). You should't use it for task args – senz Dec 17 '14 at 17:27
You still can use `fetch` to get the env var set in that way. – Nakilon Dec 27 '14 at 11:09
**UPD:** no, fetch(:branch) is glitchy, since it returns `master` by default. Better use `branch=asd` and `ENV["asd"]` – Nakilon Dec 28 '14 at 13:58

senz · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-21T08:10:06.413

Rake tasks (which cap is using) are supporting arguments.

namespace :test do
  desc "Test task"
  task :test, :arg1 do |t, args|
    arg1 = args[:arg1]
    puts arg1
  end
end

cap -T outputs:

cap yiic:test[arg1] # Test task

Example of invocation:

cap production yiic:test[test1]

Also, here is a helpful post

P.S.: you should use env vars for "global" settings. Like common values for multiple tasks.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 02 '17 at 07:04

To give an updated and working solution for Capistrano 3 (as it took me a while to find and too many tests to make it works).

My files are like:

config/
    deploy/
        staging.rb
        production.rb
    deploy.rb
...
Capfile

In staging.rb I have:

server 'staging', roles: %w(db)

set :branch,    ENV.fetch('REVISION', 'master')
set :use_sudo,  false
set :user,      'toto'
set :deploy_to, '/var/www'

(In server 'staging', staging is a SSH connexion, defined in my .ssh/config)

Then, to deploy a specific revision, I just need to call:

cap staging deploy REVISION=3b2d9ab

Where 3b2d9ab is the Git commit hash (short or long version).

Capistrano 3 pulling command line arguments

3 Answers3

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