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At PLANET ARGON, we typically do not keep our database.yml files in subversion, leaving behind a database.yml.example file instead. This makes it easy for us to share the repository with multiple developers who work on their own conventions, or sometimes an alternate database engine. We still want to have a one-step automated deployment process, however, and ssh-ing into the server to create database.yml manually just feels a little… uncouth.

The solution? Building upon Tim’s post at “http://toolmantim.com/article/2006/5/26/setting_up_capistrano_on_segpub”, our Capistrano deployment recipe now writes database.yml after we deploy, and symlinks it to the latest release directory after we update the code. Here is the code that lets us do that:

desc "Create database.yml in shared/config" 
task :after_setup do
  write_database_configuration
end

desc "Link in the production database.yml" 
task :after_update_code do
  link_database_configuration
end

def write_database_configuration
  FileUtils.mkdir_p "#{shared_dir}/config" 
  File.open("#{shared_dir}/config/database.yml", 'w') do |f|
    f.write %Q{login: &login
  adapter: postgresql
  host: localhost
  port: #{postgresql_port}
  username: #{user}
  password: #{password}

development:
  database: #{application}_development
  <<: *login

test:
  database: #{application}_test
  <<: *login

production:
  database: #{application}_production
  <<: *login
}
  end
end

def link_database_configuration
  run "ln -nfs #{deploy_to}/#{shared_dir}/config/database.yml #{release_path}/config/database.yml" 
end