Show HN: I wrote a book on Kamal, deployment tool that's coming to Rails 8
kamalmanual.com
Josef here again[0] with another book :). This time about Kamal.
= Background
When 37signals released their new deployment tool Kamal[1], I was intrigued since it fits well with my 'keep it simple' deployment philosophy.
I slowly adopted the tool and today I deploy all new projects with Kamal.
However, I have seen people giving it a go and giving up, because the initial documentation was not enough.
So I sat down for a few weeks and wrote Kamal Handbook, the missing manual to Kamal.
= What's Kamal?
Kamal is an imperative deployment tool. It's basically a successor to Capistrano, but for a container era. It's a simple wrapper around Docker and that's the whole beauty of it.
37signals created Kamal to self-host Basecamp and Hey as part of their pull out of the cloud (running managed K8s).
It's expected to become a default gem for 'rails new' in Rails 8.
= Kamal Handbook
Kamal Handbook[2] is a short and to-the-point book on Kamal. I go through a first deploy, explain fundamental ideas, talk about configuration, show two more complex examples, and discuss topics like CD. It's under 100 pages including the code and illustrations.
It's a first ever book on Kamal, available as a PDF and ePUB (tested on Kindle Paperwhite). The website features a small preview and I made one more[3] specially for SHOW HN.
So far I sold something over 300 copies and I made the sale counter public for SHOW HN.
I am around to answer any questions.
Josef
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29540808 (SHOW HN of my previous book)
[1] https://kamal-deploy.org/ (Kamal official page)
[2] https://kamalmanual.com/handbook/ (Book official page)
[3] https://kamalmanual.com/handbook/first-deploy-preview.pdf (SHOW HN preview)