Capistrano Variables

While reading through Capistrano’s code I’ve come across many the variables used to configure deploy.rb. So I don’t forget them when I need them, I’ll document them here:

• application – required
• repository – required
• scm – defaults to :subversion
• deploy_via – defaults to :checkout
• revision – defaults to the latest head version
• rails_env – defaults to ‘production’
• rake – defaults to ‘rake’
• source – Capistrano::Deploy::SCM object
• real_revision
• strategy – Capistrano::Deploy::Strategy object defined by deploy_via
• release_name – timestamp in the form of “%Y%m%d%H%M%S”
• version_dir – defaults to ‘releases’
• shared_dir – defaults to ‘shared’
• shared_children – defaults to ['public/system', 'log', 'tmp/pids']
• current_dir – defaults to ‘current’
• releases_path – path of deploy_to + version_dir (e.g. /u/apps/example/releases )
• shared_path – path of deploy_to + shared_dir (e.g. /u/apps/example/shared )
• current_path – path of deploy_to + current_dir (e.g. /u/apps/example/current )
• release_path – path of releases_path + release_name (e.g. /u/apps/example/releases/20100624000000 )
• releases – list of releases, found by running ls -x
• current_release – path of releases_path + last release (e.g. /u/apps/example/releases/20100624000000 )
• previous_release – path of releases_path + previous release (e.g. /u/apps/example/releases/20100623000000 )
• current_revision – revision id of the current release, found in the REVISION file
• latest_revision – revision id of the latest release
• previous_revision – revision id of the previous release
• run_method – either :run or :sudo depending on if :use_sudo is set
• latest_release – release path or the current release depending on if the current symlink is valid
• maintenence_basename – defaults to “maintenance”. This and maintenence_tempate_path are used to customize the page shown when the application is disabled (e.g. cap deploy:web:disable)
• maintenence_template_path – defaults to the ‘templates/maintenance.rhtml’ path
• migrate_env
• migrate_target – the version to migrate to. Defaults to :latest.

All of these variables come from lib/capistrano/recipes/deploy.rb.

Updated for Capistrano 2.15.4 on 2013-09-19.

Download a handy copy of every capistrano variable