AppCloud CLI Deploy Process is the Future

We believe the Engine Yard CLI deploy process for AppCloud is the future of Rails deployment. As of the writing of this article, the ‘engineyard’ gem, which powers the CLI deploy process, has been downloaded over sixteen thousand times since its release six months ago. We’ve had an overwhelming response. We are continually improving the CLI deploy process, from decreasing the time to deploy (now measured in seconds rather than minutes), to recently logging all deploys and making the logs available in the dashboard.

With the above in mind, we are announcing today that the legacy AppCloud deploy process is deprecated and will be turned off at the end of March 2011. Existing AppCloud customers using the legacy deploy process will need to transition to the CLI deploy process by the end of March 2011.

For those who are new to the CLI deploy process, our CLI User Guide can be found here.

In order to use the CLI deploy process, you will need to make sure each of your environments are setup correctly. Before making changes to your production environment, it’s a good idea to test the CLI deploy process in a cloned environment, to see if there are any issues with chef recipes, etc. You can clone your environment using the ‘Clone Environment’ link under the ‘More Options’ tab of any environment.

To switch to the CLI deploy process, or to check and see which deploy process you are using, use the following steps:

• From the AppCloud dashboard, choose the environment you wish to configure and click the 'More Options' tab.
  
  [ ](https://skitch.com/pdsphil/r8aex/moreoptions)
• Next, click the 'Edit Environment' link.
  
• From there, click the 'Show Advanced Options' link.
  
• Finally, be sure your environment is set to use the 'CLI Deploy' method.
  

When finished, be sure to click the ‘Update Environment’ button at the bottom of the page to save any changes made.

Note: If you absolutely cannot convert to the CLI deploy process, contact your area rep to discuss alternatives.