Getting Started

This tutorial walks you through provisioning a server with the provision recipe and running your first deploy.

Step 1: Install Deployer {#install}

Install Deployer, then run this in your project directory:

dep init

Answer the prompts. Deployer creates a deploy.php or deploy.yaml recipe defining your hosts, tasks, and imported recipes. Framework recipes extend the common recipe.

Step 2: Provision a New Server {#provision}

:::note Skip to deployment if your server is already set up. :::

Setting Up Your VPS

Create an Ubuntu VPS on Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, AWS, GCP, or similar. The provision recipe targets Ubuntu.

Provisioning needs root SSH key auth, which recent Ubuntu images disable by default. Enable it now; you can disable root SSH again once provisioning finishes.

:::tip Point a DNS record at the server's IP so you can SSH by domain name. :::

Configuring deploy.php

Define a host with at least these two settings:

• remote_user — SSH username.
• deploy_path — where to deploy on the server.

host('example.org')
    ->set('remote_user', 'deployer')
    ->set('deploy_path', '~/example');

If the server only has root, the provision recipe creates and configures a deployer user for you.

Adding an Identity Key

Put your SSH key in ~/.ssh/config instead of the recipe:

Host *
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Provisioning the Server

Provision:

dep provision

:::tip

• Connect as a non-root user: dep provision -o provision_user=your-user
• Use sudo to become root: dep provision -o become=root

:::

Provisioning prompts for PHP version, database, and more. It takes about 5 minutes and installs everything needed to serve a website at deploy_path.

Step 3: Deploy Your Project {#deploy}

Deploy:

dep deploy

On failure, Deployer prints the error and the command that failed. Common cause: missing .env or credentials. SSH into the server to edit files in place:

dep ssh

Resume from a specific step:

dep deploy --start-from deploy:migrate

Step 4: Post-Deployment Configuration

After the first deploy, the server layout looks like this:

~/example                      // deploy_path
 |- current -> releases/1      // Symlink to current release
 |- releases                   // Directory for all releases
    |- 1                       // Latest release
       |- ...
       |- .env -> shared/.env  // Symlink to shared .env file
 |- shared                     // Shared files between releases
    |- ...
    |- .env                    // Shared .env file
 |- .dep                       // Deployer configuration files

Web Server Setup

Point your web server at the current directory. Example for Nginx:

root /home/deployer/example/current/public;
index index.php;
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}

The provision recipe configures Caddy automatically, serving from public_path.

Step 5: Adding a Build Step

Add a build task to deploy.php and hook it after code updates:

task('build', function () {
    cd('{{release_path}}');
    run('npm install');
    run('npm run prod');
});

after('deploy:update_code', 'build');

Examining Deployments

List deployments with:

dep releases

Example output:

+---------------------+--------- deployer.org -------+--------+-----------+
| Date (UTC)          | Release     | Author         | Target | Commit    |
+---------------------+-------------+----------------+--------+-----------+
| 2021-11-05 14:00:22 | 1 (current) | Anton Medvedev | HEAD   | 943ded2be |
+---------------------+-------------+----------------+--------+-----------+

:::tip During development, dep push ships a patch of local changes to the host without going through git. :::