While working on an existing RoR application deployed on Heroku, I ran across the issue of rolling back previous deployments and release management into production.
The solution is a .rake file I found in a blog post by Casper Fabricious posted here that includes release management and rollbacks in staging and production environments.
Finally, here are my observations after doing my research on this topic:
General:
- heroku only deploys from master branch of the git repo.
- as a result, staging remote branches can be added but will not be deployed nor will any other branch for that matter.
- heroku_san offers some additional rake tasks but do not manage rollbacks.
- heroku release management add-on only manages single rollback to previous deployment.
- work-around is using git tags and series of rake tasks: http://goo.gl/4tCSf
- put the .rake file into the lib/tasks directory and run from command line, e.g. ‘rake deploy_staging’ or when task is nested under the :deploy namespace, then ‘rake deploy:staging_rollback’
Heroku rollbacks & release management:
- heroku staging deploy: http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/multiple-environments
- heroku release management: http://goo.gl/cZDfk
- elijah miller, heroku release management: http://goo.gl/8oY9E
- heroku_san gem on github: http://goo.gl/LdCsB
Rollbacks via rake:
- rollbacks via rake on github: http://goo.gl/4tCSf
- usage: ‘rake deploy_staging’ or when task is nested under the :deploy namespace, then ‘rake deploy:staging_rollback’