Introduction
Rocket is a free, open source and self-hostable deployment tool.
Commit, push, your project is deployed! Rocket takes care of the deployment process on your server.
It can deploy any PHP or Javascript application, regardless of the framework, with or without dependencies or assets to build.
- One time setup process
- Built with modern technologies
- Elegant beautiful interface
- Zero downtime deployments
- Agentless, it’s just SSH
- Ready to use presets for most frameworks (soon)
- Integrates with GitHub with public or private repositories
- Supports Push to deploy
- Shared directories and
cronjobs sync - Simultaneous deployments (queues)
You can learn more about Rocket features in the features page.
Understanding the need
In short: If you are familiar with online code deployment tools, this system is an alternative that bring the benefits of an online tool, for free.
Problem
Deployments are a hassle.
Eg. using Laravel, you're supposed to put your application into maintenance mode before deploying with php artisan down, pull in your code, clear caches, install packages, build assets, restart services, etc.
While you wait, you run sl in another terminal. Finally you put the application back up. Sh*t! You forgot to run the migrations.
Partial solution
Tools like Deployer can automate deployment scenarios and run from your local environnement. To work successfully they need a configuration and have to be ran manually everytime you want to deploy your website.
On the other hand, there are paid tools like Envoyer.io that offer a higher level of automation by performing the deployment online, in a completely automated way for each push you do. Problem, these services are not free, or some with a free-tier which limits the number of projects.
Rocket provides the benefits from both tools without the cons.