# Best practice approach re freezing rails & SVN/Capistrano ap

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practice-approach-re-freezing-rails-svn-capistrano-ap/85897>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 17, 2007, 12:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practice-approach-re-freezing-rails-svn-capistrano-ap/85897 "2007-02-17T12:32:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 12:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practice-approach-re-freezing-rails-svn-capistrano-ap/85897/1 "2007-02-17T12:32:13Z")

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Hi,

I’ve just had to “freeze rails” for the first time as Dreamhost isn’t on  
the  
latest version yet. So I’m assuming I will freeze rails into my  
application,  
add the new vendor/rails directory to my subversion repository ( i.e.  
will  
commit all the rails files as part of my application), then run “cap  
deploy”  
to upload the whole application including the local rails files to my  
server.

Q1 - Is this the current best practice approach? If not what are most  
rails  
developers doing here re SVN and deployment approach?

Q2 - This approach seems to impact the deployment turn-around time  
(given  
the Capistrano / SVN approach), i.e. will take quite a while now to  
deploy  
each new version onto my hoster for testing. Am I missing something  
here  
perhaps?

Thanks  
Greg

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**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 12:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practice-approach-re-freezing-rails-svn-capistrano-ap/85897/2 "2007-02-17T12:54:14Z")

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Greg H. wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I’ve just had to “freeze rails” for the first time as Dreamhost isn’t on  
> the  
> latest version yet. So I’m assuming I will freeze rails into my  
> application,  
> add the new vendor/rails directory to my subversion repository ( i.e.  
> will  
> commit all the rails files as part of my application), then run “cap  
> deploy”  
> to upload the whole application including the local rails files to my  
> server.
> 
> Q1 - Is this the current best practice approach? If not what are most  
> rails  
> developers doing here re SVN and deployment approach?
> 
> Q2 - This approach seems to impact the deployment turn-around time  
> (given  
> the Capistrano / SVN approach), i.e. will take quite a while now to  
> deploy  
> each new version onto my hoster for testing. Am I missing something  
> here  
> perhaps?
> 
> Thanks  
> Greg

I am on textdrive and have done exactly what you have suggested in your  
post. When freezing rails it added the vendor/rails directory to my  
application and from there i committed these files to my application  
trunk on the SVN repository on the textdrive server. This did take  
quite some time initially to get the files on the rails server but once  
its done once thats it.

I noticed a rake deploy does take a little longer because the  
vendor/rails files add some weight to the total files size but its only  
an extra 30-60seconds in this case.

I dont know if this is possible but could you have the different  
versions of rails in the shared folder or somewhere on your server and  
then each app looks in this directory for the appropriate version of  
rails based on whats in your configuration file? This would help as if  
you have 50 websites and half are running 1.6 and the other half 1.2  
then you will have 25 sites containg rails 1.2 in the vendor/plugins  
directory and possibly 25 with rails 1.6 in the vendor/plugins  
directory. For upgrading and maintenance this could be a nightmare, let  
alone taking up space on your server.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2007, 3:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practice-approach-re-freezing-rails-svn-capistrano-ap/85897/3 "2007-02-17T15:08:31Z")

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On Feb 17, 2007, at 6:54 AM, John B. wrote:

> directory. For upgrading and maintenance this could be a nightmare,  
> let  
> alone taking up space on your server.

Mike C. recently blogged about managing Rails versions w/ Capistrano:

[http://clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2007/01/18#ManagingVersionsWithCap](http://clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2007/01/18#ManagingVersionsWithCap)

Regards,  
Craig