DeployButton is the simplest and fastest way to get code on your server | Hacker News Reader

DeployButton is the simplest and fastest way to get code on your server

deploybutton.com

79 pointspeterkchen56 comments

(I am one of the site's creators)

Thanks for the overwhelming response - making the front page of HackerNews unexpectedly. DeployButton was our entry to RailsRumble this year, and it's a solution we created because we wanted something like this for ourselves for our own startup, Lizi.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be updating a few key issues that have been raised in these comments, including the ones about security.

We don't immediately accept that enterprises will jump to use DeployButton, but for a series of smaller consultancies, the security features we will offer will be more than enough.

Thanks again for the support - Sometimes I wish there was a "Whoops, we're not ready for HackerNews yet, don't taze me bro" break-the-glass button that puts us back on after a month's time.

Hey yakshaving,

I like the idea and you've got an interesting internal page, but your front page ("What if deploying your code...") is literally unusable on an iPhone and probably on other mobile platforms -- the button is not visible, nothing is clickable, and it can't be scrolled or resized. You might want to rethink that so as to capture the people who are browsing HN / TechCrunch / whatever while surfing on the bus on the go.

Same here on a Galaxy Nexus.

Thanks a lot - I DID notice that -- For the first time after a friend pointed out that we were on HackerNews and I was in line waiting to eat a delicious veggie burrito. We opened the link in horror to notice that our catch splash page was unusable on mobile.

Sorry about this, a fix for this is coming too! From what I understand, we're not allowed to check in or "deploy" until the competition (judging) is complete, but its now on our list.

Thanks so much for your support!

It's not just mobile - I can't do anything with it on my netbook, either.

Hmm - really, that's odd. What browser/OS and netbook are you using? Any chance you can send me a screenshot?

contact@deploybutton.com

It's Firefox on Ubuntu 12.04 on an Asus Eee 1005P. I think it's just a vertical resolution problem - comparing on another screen it looked like the big red button was just cut off, and without the scroll bar working there was nothing I could do on the front page.

Checking again, I see that there's a four or five pixel strip of red bottom center that is actually clickable, but it's not exactly obvious. Screenshot here: http://imgur.com/JWcaP

Outstanding site. I'm a paying user of DeployHQ at the moment. My biggest issue there is not having the ability to add new deployment servers via an API. Any thoughts on adding API access at some point?

http://deploybutton.com/p/e7wftp14il1ij2a5evqx/repo: Lorem Ipsum text.

I'm interested to know why the only optimal deploy for Django is SSH? Django works great on Heroku as well.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. As you may already know, this was built for the 48hour Rails Rumble hackathon. So it will definitely have quirks and there's a ton of stuff we had to cut (like collab git access instead of full oauth which i believe would have solved most security concerns).

Dropbox let us set things up nicely, where we opt for only a single folder (Apps/DeployButton) and we can only see stuff you place directly inside.

The main appeal of DeployButton for me was to have a service I could easily connect to Campfire/Hipchat to script out deployments from there. It's not that deploying is "hard", it's that it's tedious and I believe should always done as a collaborative experience instead of solo.

More feedback greatly appreciated. Site and workers are already overloaded (we didnt anticipate an HN post). So apologies in advance.

This looks awesome. My concern though is giving a 3rd party access to my sites. There's not a lot of info regarding terms, security, data handling etc.

Second that, it looks like maybe a cool gimmick for a personal site or small project but you are crazy if you would use it for anything important. Not to say the slick front-end wouldn't be useful, you should release the source code.

"It's built with simplicity and power in mind -- The simplicity for a non-technical user to be given the reigns to deploy from a master branch to a "staging" server… or to a production server after any tests have passed."

I'm sure there's good reasoning behind wanting to give a non-technical user the rights to deploy code to servers, but I'm afraid I can't seem to conceive of them right now. Can you elaborate why you would want someone without the requisite technical skills deploying code?

Copy changes. "Knobs" (configuration parameter changes that affect product-level behavior, things a product manager could decide about.)

Sure you can abstract copy from your codebase or markup, but that's not trivial or necessarily a benefit.

Exactly - Changing copy via a tool like the now-defunct but open sourced CopyCopter, small tweaks here and there could completely be within the scope for a non-technical analyst to deploy once deemed ready.

It's also nice for a consultant who manages many clients, which we included in the copy in other places.

Why on earth would you put your copy and configuration in your code base, and not in a CMS (for copy) or a database (for configuration)?

Because that's a lot of extra work and our product manager at our small startup is competent enough to change e.g. the number of a constant in a knobs.py without wrecking things.

Great. Now make a big blue button to write the app for me as well, and a green one to send me all the money.

Clever. When we create that one, I'll password protect it and make sure it stays off HackerNews ;-)

What does this do that running a Jenkins server couldn't do?

make it easy

How is this different from just using Heroku's Command Line Tools, which are also just a "one command" deploy?

Honest question - I'm wondering what I'm missing.

I never realized deploying code was so complicated

Releases are easy if you don't stop to think about what could go wrong.

until you had > 20 projects to deploy dozens of times a day, to multiple machines.

Well, you would have to deploy serious code for projects with far-reaching financial consequences when things go wrong first...

I said the same thing last time a company came along that did deployments. Why would I trust a 3rd party rights to my whole system. Sell the product as software I can install and I'd think about it, until then I wouldn't even sign up.

It looks pretty awesome, but Linode is not listed in the deploy option.

And yeah, security would be an issue for me. I would most likely set up a user just for DeployButton.

I'm not sure what you're seeing, but Linode is right under Heroku on the right side "your web server" list.

Yeah, but when I try to set up a deploy button...

http://imgur.com/PEACn

SSH is what you're looking for.

I was thinking about something like this, but not just for deployment but for server/service provisioning. Simplified chef-server as a service.

If you use .NET, check out http://www.octopusdeploy.com (finally something..)

That has to be the slickest bikeshed I've seen all day...

These kids need mentoring bad. Someone steer them to a worthwhile project please.

Thanks, I'm sure you mean that with the best intentions and not to be a troll. I'd love to hear your ideas to build a useful tool that we could 1) use for ourselves on our own startup (http://lizi.ai) during a Rails competition as a way to have a quick creative diversion :)

All that aside, I'd love to hear your worthwhile project ideas, Moe! contact@deploybutton.com

This site doesn't work at all in mobile Safari

Thanks David! We found that out after deploying for the competition (RailsRumble 2012). We can't quite fix it now, but it should be changed after the judging.

I appreciate the support and heads up!

There's at least a bit of irony that you can't deploy a fix right now.

Very cool site! I think aTech Media's DeployHQ.com has been doing something similar. :) Does this differ in any way?

I don't usually deploy but when I do, I appreciate original website design. You got an upvote.

gb2reddit

Thanks for the props, Flyinglizard!

This would be a nice and simple way to get ahold of people's login credentials. Oh wait.

What's wrong with `git pull`, `svn update` etc?

+1. This button looks like a too much pimp to be useful. And let's coin that term: TMPTBU!

How can I choose a custom port for SFTP/SSH?

No mobile site.

Deploying code is trivial.

What about databases?

What about multiple code/DB versions and rollbacks?

What about rolling out to one data center and directing 1% of the traffic there?

What about fast P2P deployments?

Luckily great tools have been built for this. We use Opscode Chef and it's life changing. After an admittedly painful learning hump, we're able to completely power our sysadmin via code.

DeployButton is just the trigger button, not the missile :)

There's a market for the missile, not the button.

People also sell buttons.

Link? I'm all out of buttons.

All of this and all of what rorrr mentioned should be a primary thought. I always hope people say, "duh, that's obvious" but I've worked too many places where ramp up on a project is a hodge podge of copy pasted scripts, years-old info on a wiki and "good luck, take a few weeks to get setup".

At the very least, all of my projects can be developed on in a live testing environment after one step after check out and it works everywhere the toolchain works. It lowers barrier of entry for developers and for users that want or need to build from source.

Nice job. Great graphics. Check out my team's app.

http://the-glimmer-twins.r12.railsrumble.com/

While this is a kind of spammish comment I tried it. My name appears in the list with other 2, I clicked play but nothing happened.

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