Creating and calling custom deployment task using run_locally in Capistrano version 3 - capistrano

Question

I have a static page that I want to compile locally using gulp. The command I would run in the local shell, from the directory that contains gulp and the gulpfile (set by compile_path in this example) would be "$> gulp build".
# config valid only for Capistrano 3.1
lock '3.1.0'
set :application, 'appname'
set :repo_url, 'git#bitbucket.org/appname.git'
set :compile_path, '/Users/nico/DevOps/repo/appname'
# Default branch is :master
set :branch, 'cap3'
namespace :deploy do
after :started, :notify do
desc 'Run gulp to compile the static site'
task :gulp_build do
run_locally do
execute "#{fetch(:compile_path)}/gulp", " build"
end
end
end
desc 'Restart application'
task :restart do
on roles(:app), in: :sequence, wait: 5 do
# Your restart mechanism here, for example:
# execute :touch, release_path.join('tmp/restart.txt')
end
end
after :publishing, :restart
after :restart, :clear_cache do
on roles(:web), in: :groups, limit: 3, wait: 10 do
# Here we can do anything such as:
# within release_path do
# execute :rake, 'cache:clear'
# end
end
end
end
Basically, what I'm trying to achieve is a local precompile so that my deployment consists of simply sending the locally compiled files to a deployment location. when I execute "bundle exec cap staging deploy:gulp_build" I get:
cap aborted!
Don't know how to build task 'deploy:gulp_build'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/gems/capistrano-3.1.0/lib/capistrano/application.rb:15:in run'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/gems/capistrano-3.1.0/bin/cap:3:in'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/bin/cap:23:in load'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/bin/cap:23:in'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/bin/ruby_executable_hooks:15:in eval'
/Users/nico/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/bin/ruby_executable_hooks:15:in'
(See full trace by running task with --trace)
I realize that there are probably much better ways to deploy this, but it's a companion static site to a rails app which is being deployed successfully via capistrano, and I'd like to just use the same deployment method for both.

Answer 1

This was handled pretty well by creating a new task in the deploy namespace. in my code below are placeholders for real values that I didn't want to post on SO.
lib/capistrano/tasks/gulp_build_local.cap:
#assumes the gulpfile is in root of your cap install
namespace :deploy do
desc 'Run gulp to compile the static site'
task :gulp_build do
#run_locally doesn't play nice with the 'on' directive (it's 'on' localhost)
run_locally do
execute "gulp build"
end
end
end
deploy.rb:
# config valid only for Capistrano 3.1
lock '3.1.0'
set :application, '<appname>'
set :repo_url, 'git#bitbucket.org/<appname>.git'
namespace :deploy do
#custom tasks to build via gulp
before :deploy, 'gulp_build_local'
desc 'Restart application'
task :restart do
on roles(:app), in: :sequence, wait: 5 do
#nothing here, because there's no app server for this static site.
end
end
after :publishing, :restart
after :restart, :clear_cache do
on roles(:web), in: :groups, limit: 3, wait: 10 do
#nothing here
end
end
end
of course, once I figured this out I immediately deprecated it in favor of new tasks to install gulp in the release dir on the target, compiling there and linking the site root to the pub folder generated by the gulp process. Hopefully this learning experience will be useful for someone working though the use of run_locally, though.