Deploy Rails 5.1 / Webpacker app with Capistrano

Question

I have an Ubuntu server to deploy my Rails projects. In my Ubuntu server I had RVM.

Now I want to deploy new projects with Rails 5.1 and webpacker. To deploy this projects, I've installed NVM, npm and yarn in my Ubuntu server.

In my Rails 5.1 / Webpacker project I have following gems for capistrano deployment:

Gemfile

group :development do
  gem 'capistrano-rails'
  gem 'capistrano-rvm'
  gem 'capistrano-passenger'
  gem 'capistrano-nvm', require: false
  gem 'capistrano-yarn'
end

In deploy.rb I've added some configurations for capistrano nvm and capistrano yarn.

deploy.rb

set :nvm_type, :user # or :system, depends on your nvm setup
set :nvm_node, 'v7.10.0'
set :nvm_map_bins, %w{node npm yarn}

set :yarn_target_path, -> { release_path.join('client') } #
set :yarn_flags, '--production --silent --no-progress'    # default
set :yarn_roles, :all                                     # default
set :yarn_env_variables, {}

Also I've added node_modules in linked_dirs.

deploy.rb

set :linked_dirs, %w{log tmp/pids tmp/cache tmp/sockets vendor/bundle public/system node_modules client/node_modules}

The problem comes when I execute cap deploy in assets:precompile step. Next you have the error log.

terminal log

00:10 deploy:assets:precompile
  01 /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm 2.4.1@project do bundle exec rake assets:precompile
  01 Yarn executable was not detected in the system.
  01 Download Yarn at https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install
  01 /home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/bin/rake: No such file or directory - node
  01 Node.js not installed. Please download and install Node.js https://nodejs.org/en/download/
(Backtrace restricted to imported tasks)
cap aborted!
SSHKit::Runner::ExecuteError: Exception while executing on host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx: rake exit status: 1
rake stdout: Yarn executable was not detected in the system.
Download Yarn at https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install
/home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/bin/rake: No such file or directory - node
Node.js not installed. Please download and install Node.js 
https://nodejs.org/en/download/
rake stderr: Nothing written

SSHKit::Command::Failed: rake exit status: 1
rake stdout: Yarn executable was not detected in the system.
Download Yarn at https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install
/home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/bin/rake: No such file or directory - node
Node.js not installed. Please download and install Node.js 
https://nodejs.org/en/download/
rake stderr: Nothing written

Tasks: TOP => deploy:assets:precompile
(See full trace by running task with --trace)
The deploy has failed with an error: Exception while executing on host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx: rake exit status: 1
rake stdout: Yarn executable was not detected in the system.
Download Yarn at https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install
/home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/bin/rake: No such file or directory - node
Node.js not installed. Please download and install Node.js 
https://nodejs.org/en/download/
rake stderr: Nothing written



** DEPLOY FAILED
** Refer to log/capistrano.log for details. Here are the last 20 lines:


 DEBUG [016276ab]    * spring (2.0.1)

 DEBUG [016276ab]    * spring-watcher-listen (2.0.1)

 DEBUG [016276ab]    * web-console (3.5.0)

 DEBUG [016276ab]   Install missing gems with `bundle install`

 DEBUG [016276ab] Finished in 0.677 seconds with exit status 1 (failed).

  INFO [86e74b01] Running /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm 2.4.1@project do bundle install --path /home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle --without development test --deployment --quiet on xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

 DEBUG [86e74b01] Command: cd /home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021 && ( export NODE_VERSION="v7.10.0" ; /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm 2.4.1@project do bundle install --path /home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle --without development test --deployment --quiet )

 DEBUG [86e74b01]   Warning, new version of rvm available '1.29.1', you are using older version '1.26.11'.

You can disable this warning with:    echo rvm_autoupdate_flag=0 >> ~/.rvmrc

You can enable  auto-update  with:    echo rvm_autoupdate_flag=2 >> ~/.rvmrc

  INFO [86e74b01] Finished in 3.209 seconds with exit status 0 (successful).

 DEBUG [4a428031] Running if test ! -d /home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021; then echo "Directory does not exist '/home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021'" 1>&2; false; fi on xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

 DEBUG [4a428031] Command: if test ! -d /home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021; then echo "Directory does not exist '/home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021'" 1>&2; false; fi

 DEBUG [4a428031] Finished in 0.066 seconds with exit status 0 (successful).

  INFO [d225a8b5] Running /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm 2.4.1@project do bundle exec rake assets:precompile on xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

 DEBUG [d225a8b5] Command: cd /home/deploy/rails/241/project/releases/20170511083021 && ( export NODE_VERSION="v7.10.0" RAILS_ENV="production" ; /usr/local/rvm/bin/rvm 2.4.1@project do bundle exec rake assets:precompile )

 DEBUG [d225a8b5]   Yarn executable was not detected in the system.

Download Yarn at https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install

 DEBUG [d225a8b5]   /home/deploy/rails/241/project/shared/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/bin/rake: No such file or directory - node

 DEBUG [d225a8b5]   Node.js not installed. Please download and install Node.js https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Thanks in advance!

Hirurg103 · Answer 1 · 2017-08-21T08:40:02.643

I prefer to compile assets locally and then copy to the production servers with rsync:

# lib/capistrano/tasks/precompile.rake
namespace :assets do
  desc 'Precompile assets locally and then rsync to web servers'
  task :precompile do
    run_locally do
      with rails_env: stage_of_env do
        execute :bundle, 'exec rake assets:precompile'
      end
    end

    on roles(:web), in: :parallel do |server|
      run_locally do
        execute :rsync,
          "-a --delete ./public/packs/ #{fetch(:user)}@#{server.hostname}:#{shared_path}/public/packs/"
        execute :rsync,
          "-a --delete ./public/assets/ #{fetch(:user)}@#{server.hostname}:#{shared_path}/public/assets/"
      end
    end

    run_locally do
      execute :rm, '-rf public/assets'
      execute :rm, '-rf public/packs'
    end
  end
end

# config/deploy.rb
after 'deploy:updated', 'assets:precompile'

In your Capfile you need to include all the capistrano tasks:

# Load custom tasks from `lib/capistrano/tasks` if you have any defined
Dir.glob('lib/capistrano/tasks/**/*.rake').each { |r| import r }

This eliminates the need to install node and yarn on the production servers.

Of course you need node and yarn installed locally

Hi, could you tell me how I can use this code? I'm new to Capistrano and don't know where to put it. Thanks — Hoang Do, Aug 20 '17 at 11:08
@HoangDo I updated the answer with file names where to put the code — Hirurg103, Aug 21 '17 at 08:41

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 05 '20 at 03:08

What worked for me was making sure NVM was included in the PATH. By default, in a bash terminal, NVM adds its environment variables to the end of ~/.bashrc, but much of that file is not usually executed in a non-interactive terminal (which Capistrano runs in). I found this comment helpful:

Put your NVM source script in your .bashrc which is still evaluated even during an non-interactive SSH session. Just make sure you place the declarations at the top, before the case statement:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
      *) return;;
esac

This is very helpful, thanks. Even though it might be a good technique to compile assets locally, as proposed above, this answer is a good hint in troubleshooting a capistrano deployment setup *using nvm on the remote server*, as asked in the question. — R4ttlesnake, Dec 16 '20 at 11:04

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 11 '17 at 09:55

The error tells you pretty much what's wrong. Neither Yarn or Node can be found on the server. Your installation might be incorrect.

Follow instructions to install both here:

https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions

and here:

https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install/#linux-tab

Then make sure you can call:

yarn
node

On the server. If not, you might need to add paths to executables into your PATH variable

I'm facing the same issue ... But the solution didnt worked for me :( — Abhishek Aravindan, Jul 20 '20 at 11:51

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 02 '20 at 18:17

First - Install Yarn

curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install yarn

Second - Install NodeJS(now 14 is newest):

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Deploy Rails 5.1 / Webpacker app with Capistrano

4 Answers4

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