no_release server option disappeared in v3

[dunedain289]

Capistrano v2 understood the :no_release => true flag to server, allowing tasks to execute on other servers without performing the normal release flow on them as well.

From my current reading of the v3 code, this is no longer the case. The use of on roles :all throughout the deploy flow blocks this behavior.

Is this option, or similar flexibility, going to come back? My environment is probably unique for Rails/Capistrano deploys - we deploy to a shared NFS filesystem, which means only 1 host needs to update the code or run migrations, but many hosts need to execute other actions within our flow.

I'm willing to create a pull request to make this happen, but I'd like a little guidance on the maintainer's preferred plan here. My current best thought is to change the

on roles :all do
  ...
end

blocks in the normal flow to something like:

on roles fetch(:deploy_role) do
  ...
end

along with adding set :deploy_role, :all to the default settings.

[seenmyfate]

It should be possible to implement this using the filter option - so for example:

on roles :all, filter: :no_release do
  # 
end

Combined with:

role :nfs, %w{vagrant@localhost} no_release: true

I'm not a massive fan of 'no_release', so if you can find something better then please do. Let me know if you need anything else, it would be nice to get this into 3.1.x

[seenmyfate]

Actually considering this further, I seem to recall that filter is actually an alias for select, meaning that this is actually the opposite of what you would need here - maybe we need to implement an except option, or alternatively just set a default option to all servers of release: true and then explicitly set release: false for the servers that don't require the code. That way maybe on roles :all, select: :release might read a little better.

[leehambley]

I believe there's already the opposite of filter, I think I called it exclude. But you'd have to check the code. (At least I recall planning to implement it)

[seenmyfate]

@dunedain289 do you have any plans to implement this? I don't want to duplicate your efforts, but if not I'll probably look to pick this up on Friday

[dunedain289]

Sorry about the close+reopen - today is not my day for using Github.

I was looking through the code yesterday, trying to understand all the role and server selection flow, but didn't find an exclude option. I also didn't quite grok that flow well enough to make major changes, so if you have a game plan here, I'll gladly defer to you.

[seenmyfate]

@dunedain289 would you have some time to try out this feature branch?

 gem 'capistrano', github: 'capistrano/capistrano', branch: 'feature/no-release'

[dunedain289]

@seenmyfate from my quick reading of that branch, it looks like exactly what we need. I may not get a chance to experiment until Monday or Tuesday, but I'll let you know my results when I can.