This is the start of a series on deployment

In the old days web software was deployed by uploading software via FTP, in a folder that was then read by a web server, and then presented to the user of the web-application. I’ve also deployed compiled .war files manually via a tomcat web-interface. Databases, storage, these were all pretty much managed by hand, sometimes even requiring physically adding a new drive or server rack.

The problem with this approach, though conceptually simple, is that deploying manually is error prone. One forgets about files, configurations, put files in the wrong directory, or forget to make changes to the database in order to make the latest change work.

The first step is hence automation of the manual steps. I will discuss a few high level dimensions that can be used to discuss solutions. I’d like to stress these are in practice scales and approaches can be mixed.

Style: Imperative vs declarative deployment…