# Chef and application deploy

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-and-application-deploy/1547>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [September 8, 2010, 11:10am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-and-application-deploy/1547 "2010-09-08T11:10:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![SMiX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7c8e57/32.png) [@SMiX](https://discourse.chef.io/u/SMiX)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 11:10am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-and-application-deploy/1547/1 "2010-09-08T11:10:22Z")

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How is it possible to keep my rails application up to date using chef?

While reading documentation I understood how to set up servers from scratch  
using knife bootstrap. But is it possible to run another tasks after this?

Earlier I have used capistrano but now we have two staging and ten  
production servers which needs to be up to date when new version of the  
application is released.

–  
Andrey Kouznetsov

icq: 889986  
skype: smixok  
jabber: [me@smix.name](mailto:me@smix.name)

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**Author:** ![Jon\_Wood](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/jon_wood/32/826_2.png) [@Jon\_Wood](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Jon_Wood)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2010, 11:30am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/chef-and-application-deploy/1547/2 "2010-09-08T11:30:24Z")

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On 8 September 2010 12:10, SMiX [smixok@gmail.com](mailto:smixok@gmail.com) wrote:

> How is it possible to keep my rails application up to date using chef?

I'm using the deploy resource and some custom cookbooks to do it, but  
Opscode's application cookbook looks like it could work well - when I  
was writing my deployment code it wasn't around.

[http://github.com/opscode/cookbooks/tree/master/application/](http://github.com/opscode/cookbooks/tree/master/application/)

> While reading documentation I understood how to set up servers from scratch  
> using knife bootstrap. But is it possible to run another tasks after this?

Yes. Bootstrapping is just the very surface of what Chef is capable  
of. I'd suggest that you read through the "Chef Basics" documentation  
on the wiki to get an idea of what's possible, and then come back and  
ask for clarification of anything that's unclear to you, since it's a  
really quite wide topic to cover in an e-mail like this.

[http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Chef+Basics](http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Chef+Basics)

> Earlier I have used capistrano but now we have two staging and ten  
> production servers which needs to be up to date when new version of the  
> application is released.

You're in luck. That's something that Chef is incredibly good at 😉