Capistrano + Git : repository local to production server

Question

I am trying to do 'deploy:cold' for my app. The git repo is local to my deployment server (i.e. I only have one server for everything and I don't host my code on github).

Here is the transcript (replaced my app name with "myapp" for privacy)

  * executing `deploy:cold'
  * executing `deploy:update'
 ** transaction: start
  * executing `deploy:update_code'
    executing locally: "git ls-remote /home/mrichman/git/myapp.git master"
fatal: '/home/mrichman/git/myapp.git' does not appear to be a git repository
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
*** [deploy:update_code] rolling back
  * executing "rm -rf /var/www/myapp.com/releases/20100218203108; true"
    servers: ["myapp.com"]
Password:
    [myapp.com] executing command
    command finished
Command git ls-remote /home/mrichman/git/myapp.git master returned status code 32768

Here is my deploy.rb: http://pastie.org/831424

I have also tried

set :repository, "deploy@localhost:/home/mrichman/git/myapp.git"

but that gives me

ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused

Any ideas are appreciated.

Answer 1

Just ran into the same problem. The key is to not use deploy_via copy but rather set :local_repository

This should be set to the URL you use to access the repository from your development computer/laptop.

So mine has

set :repository, "file:///srv/git/myapp.git"
set :local_repository, "nameOfHostFromSSHConfig:/srv/git/myapp.git"

Seems to have worked. Just remember to then remove the deploy_via copy line as well.

Answer 2

Log in as the user of the site you are deploying to and try this to see if your user has permission to access that directory:

ls -la /home/mrichman/git/myapp.git

If you get a Permission denied error then you'll have to make sure that you set permissions on the enclosing directories of the repository that allow the deployment script to access the files.