Simple node app deployment

There are so many different ways to deploy a node app around the internet. Here’s my way. A way I no longer use.

1. Use git for version control

2. Install forever – this allows handling of the node process. It’s better than running it in a screen session like most people do!¹

   sudo npm install -g forever

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3. Allow the git user account (which should be unprivileged) to host on port 80. After following this guide I decided to use setcap:

   sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin
   sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=%2Bep' /usr/local/bin/node

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4. Add a post-receive hook on the remote (bare) repository to check out and restart the node process using forever. For example:

    #!/bin/bash
    export GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/naggie/dspa/
    git checkout -f
   
    cd $GIT_WORK_TREE
   
    forever stop dspa-server.js
    forever start dspa-server.js

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That’s it! Simply push to the server to update and restart the node instance.

Also a convention is to use an environment variable to define the port. This is most useful when a proxy is used (for example, to use apache). This is used, for example, to work with the cloud9 ide.

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