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Configure Continuous Deployment for Your Rails Application ​

There are two ways to automatically deploy your Rails application on Deploio:

  1. Polling — Deploio polls your repository for changes (every minute) and deploys automatically.
  2. CI/CD pipeline — Your CI pipeline tells Deploio to deploy a specific commit after tests pass.

Option 1: Polling ​

This is the simplest approach. Point your application at a branch, and Deploio will regularly check for new commits and redeploy when it detects changes:

bash
nctl update app {APP_NAME} --git-revision=main

No CI/CD setup is required. This is a good option for staging environments or projects that don't need a CI pipeline. It might also be an acceptable option if you work with dedicated release branches where you don't run your tests again.

WARNING

With polling, Deploio might deploy every push to the git branch. This would start the deployment process immediately, before your tests have passed. Consider the next option, if you want to delay the deployment until your checks pass.

Option 2: CI/CD Pipeline ​

With this approach, your CI pipeline can run checks first and then trigger a deployment by updating the application's git revision to a specific commit SHA. This gives you full control over what gets deployed.

Prerequisites ​

  • A Rails application under version control with a remote repository on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or any other Git hosting service
  • A running Deploio Rails application. If you haven't deployed yet, follow the Quick Start guide.
  • A CI/CD tool like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, or CircleCI

Create a Service Account ​

TIP

Before you create resources, ensure that the project you want to create the resources in is selected by running nctl auth set-project {project_name}. Alternatively, you can specify the project in every command using the --project flag.

To avoid storing your personal credentials in your CI/CD pipeline, create an API service account (ASA) that only has permissions within a project:

bash
nctl create apiserviceaccount {ASA_NAME}

Retrieve the token:

bash
nctl get apiserviceaccounts {ASA_NAME} --print-token

Configure CI/CD Environment Variables ​

Set the following environment variables in your CI/CD tool:

  • DEPLOIO_APP_NAME: The name of your application in Deploio.
  • DEPLOIO_PROJECT: The name of the project in Deploio.
  • NCTL_API_TOKEN: The API token from the service account above.
  • NCTL_ORGANIZATION: Your organization name in Deploio.

NCTL_API_TOKEN and NCTL_ORGANIZATION are used to authenticate the nctl CLI. Since the API token is sensitive, store it as a secret in your CI/CD tool.

Deploy Script ​

The following script can be used in any CI/CD tool that runs on Debian/Ubuntu:

bash
echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://repo.nine.ch/deb/ /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/repo.nine.ch.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nctl
nctl auth login
nctl update app $DEPLOIO_APP_NAME \
  --project $DEPLOIO_PROJECT \
  --git-revision=$(git rev-parse HEAD) \
  --skip-repo-access-check

The script installs the nctl CLI, authenticates using the API token, and updates the git revision to the current commit. This tells Deploio to fetch and build that exact commit.

If you are using a different operating system, adjust the installation step accordingly. See the nctl setup instructions.

WARNING

This example deploys the current commit. In a production environment, you may want to restrict deployments to a specific branch or tag.

Caveats ​

The deploy script above is minimal and has some limitations:

  • It does not check if the deployment was successful — CD might fail silently.
  • It terminates immediately after updating the git revision, before the deploy finishes.

INFO

A blocking mode for nctl update app is on the roadmap. Once available, the command can wait until the deployment finishes and exit with a non-zero status on failure, removing the need for a separate status check.

In the meantime, for a more robust setup that waits for the deployment to finish and checks its status, see the deployment feedback guide, which includes an example status check script in Ruby.

Troubleshooting ​

If nctl auth login runs indefinitely, the NCTL_API_TOKEN is most likely not set correctly. Ensure that the token is available to the script and that the service account was created within the correct project.

Next Steps ​

Now that your application is live and deploying automatically, you'll want to keep an eye on it. Head over to the Monitoring and Logs guide to learn how to observe your application's logs and metrics.