Deploy a specific git branch via capistrano to a staging server

Question

I have my master branch that is used to deploy to a staging server. And I have my stable branch that is used to deploy to the production server. The capistrano script I use is setup this way.

Current workflow: Whenever there is an issue with production, I branch out from stable branch, fix things up, commit it, merge it with stable and then deploy to production.

This gives no chance for me to test that bug fix (happened in that hot fix branch), in my staging server. Ideally what I want would be:

Wanted workflow: Whenever there is an issue with production, I branch out from stable branch, fix things up, commit it, merge it with master, deploy and test that fix in staging server, validate if it works, then merge that hot fix branch to stable and deploy it the production.

How do I get this right with Capistrano? Please help.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: Forgive me if i've misunderstood your question, but i think you've already answered you own question.

Your Git workflow is just that, your 'git workflow'. Doesn't really have anything to do with Capistrano. Capistrano will fetch whatever you want it to, it's up to you how you want to merge and branch your repo to get it to the point of deployment.

From what you said i'm assuming you have your cap stages setup already to deploy the right branch, but if you don't there is an example below. This will fetch the different branch for each type of deploy.

deploy.rb

  set :stages, %w(staging production)
  set :default_stage, "staging"

deploy/staging.rb #cap deploy

  set :branch, 'master'

deploy/production.rb #cap production deploy

  set :branch, 'stable'