Deploy from bitbucket to live server

Question

I recently start using git and have some doubt about the best workflow.

1 - Is best to use an online repository like Bitbucket as intermetiate between my local and remote servers? O it will be better to deploy directly from local to remote?

I think it will be great to have this middle repository because it will be like a backup, but also will complicate my workflow.

2 - If I push my code to Bitbucket what is the best way to deploy the code to remote server? I have found some differents ways:

• Create a git repository on live server I make a pull from bitbucket
• Use bitbucket hooks like in this posts: http://jonathannicol.com/blog/2013/11/19/automated-git-deployments-from-bitbucket/ or this other http://brandonsummers.name/blog/2012/02/10/using-bitbucket-for-automated-deployments/
• Use specialiced service like http://dploy.io/
• Use an automation tool like capistrano

I want the more efective way in long terms that don't give me a lot of headaches. I don't mind to pay or learn something new (I never use capistrano..).

If you know any alternative way I would love to read about!

Answer 1

I've just gone through the same setup myself with a rails 4 project I've been working on locally, and now deploying to a remote server.

You should most definitely be using some sort of source version control! I'm currently using bitbucket which has been awesome for my setup and workflow, as well as having the added benefit of being free for private repo's.

You are on the right track there, my workflow looks like this currently:

local dev -> commit to bitbucket Then using capistrano, even though the script is run locally the actions still get fired remotely on the server, so that looks like this.

                                               (bitbucket repo)
                                                       ^
                                                       |
(local dev) deploy capistrano -> (server) fetches from bitbucket and runs capistrano commands

The first two resources detail the process I followed: http://robmclarty.com/blog/how-to-deploy-a-rails-4-app-with-git-and-capistrano

http://matteodepalo.github.io/blog/2013/03/07/how-i-migrated-from-heroku-to-digital-ocean-with-chef-and-capistrano/

When you want to get a little more fancy and automated I suggest adding in something like Chef that you can use to configure the server itself (so you can spin up VM's or VPS's and run a few scripts to have it setup in a couple minutes as opposed to installing all the packages manually)