Brightbox Gem v2.1.2 released 9 Oct 08

I have released v2.1.2 of the Brightbox deployment gem onto Rubyforge today. This update to the gem is thanks to all the feedback we’ve received from customers over the summer.

The documentation on the wiki has been updated to cover the new features and fixes. If you have any tips or find any errors, you can edit the wiki yourself, or just let us know.

NEW FEATURES

Cluster support

The gem handles mongrels that are not on the same server as the web server. All you need do is set the mongrel host to ‘:remote’ and the gem will work out from your :app definitions where the mongrels are.

Nginx SSL support

Those using Nginx can now deploy SSL automatically in the same way as Apache.

Enhanced shared area management

We’ve improved the shared area system so that it now works globally across all your servers (assuming you have a shared network drive). Simply set global_shared_path to a directory on the network and list your shared directories and files in global_shared_dirs and global_shared_files.

Adjustable monit monitoring

You can now increase (or decrease) the amount of memory and cpu your mongrels are allowed to use and change the url that monit checks to determine if your application is working properly.

‘Rich’ maintenance page

Many customers are unhappy with the slightly stark standard Capistrano maintenance page. So we’ve improved the system allowing you to have a fully styled static web site where the simple maintenance page once lived.

Simple staging environment

The gem has been altered so that it will work properly with the standard Capistrano multistage extensions.

Easier management of rake tasks

Two new tasks have been created so that you can easily change and extend the rake tasks that are run after code deployment.

FIXES AND ENHANCEMENTS
Other improvements include:

• REST verbs now work with page cached content.
• The apache deflate module is on by default.
• The gem now detects which web server you have in place and manipulates the correct one.
• Separate error pages for each of the 5xx error pages on Nginx.
• Going into maintenance returns the correct 503 error and doesn’t change the URL.
• Static assets are cached aggressively in the browser, with fine control available in deploy.rb if required.