Capistrano: Version control for files in shared/

When Capistrano deploys a Rails app, it creates a shared/ directory to store files that should be shared across releases and not re-exported every time. In my application I have several things in the shared/ directory that rarely 开发者_如何学运维change (so they belong there rather than in the application tree), but I'd still like them to be version controlled for the times when they do change.

What is the best way to approach version controlling those files but keeping them separate from the repository Capistrano is exporting from?

The /shared directory is really for un-versioned data. For example, you might store bundled gems so that you don't have to re-install all your gems every release. You can also store you logs there so they don't get overwritten every time you deploy. You can store pid files there so you don't loose the process ids of critical processes during a deploy. You might even store user generated or partially processed data there so that it is not removed during a release. If a file is meant to be versioned and has the chance of changing though, I would recommend keeping it with the rest of your files and out of the shared directory.

That said, you can always also write deploy scripts to pre-populate data in your shared directory, like database configuration files. These scripts will get run on each deploy and can be entirely customized. For example, your database config script might only write the config file if it doesn't already exist.

Another common use of the shared directory is for configuration files. Versioning and source control for configuration files is a very good idea, but should managed in a system configuration management tool. In my environment, I manage code releases with Capistrano and system configuration with Puppet. That way, there is still source control over configuration files, but they are kept distinct from the code deploy process. In turn, the code deploy process is kept independent of system configuration.