SameShirtEveryDay.com

To configure Capistrano for the most basic staging environment, I modified my deploy.rb like so:

ENV['STAGE'] ||= "staging"

paths = {
  :staging          => "stage01.mydomain.com",
  :production       => "mydomain.com"
}

set :application,   "mydomain.com"
set :dir,           paths[ENV['STAGE'].to_sym]
set :user,          "..."

role :web, application
role :app, application
role :db,  application, :primary => true

set :deploy_to, "/home/#{user}/#{dir}"
set :use_sudo, false

As you can see, it defaults to “staging” so any calls like “cap deploy” or “cap update_code” will be performed in a safe sandbox. To go live, I have a “cap_production.bat” in the root folder:

SET STAGE=production
cap %1 %2 %3 %4 %5