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I'm the OP of the mailing list post, and have maintained Capistrano for the last 5 years. I'm passionate about providing great open source tools, my business an

I'm the OP of the mailing list post, and have maintained Capistrano for the last 5 years. I'm passionate about providing great open source tools, my business and reputation are built on Capistrano and I don't want to give it up, but it's destroying me.

mtarnovan 13y ago
As I have used Capistrano on many projects, I want to thank you for your hard work and assure you that it has been much appreciated.
beachstartup 13y ago
if you can't find a successor - just keep in mind that people don't tend to step up unless there is a vacuum. if you were to step down, someone would step up, especially in a community as large as the one you're in. if it's destroying you, leave. go on a long vacation. it's not worth it. there's no shame or guilt in taking a break or passing on your work.
gnufied 13y ago
Hey Lee, I am yet to look into v3 stuff closely, but if you think it is better why not make maintstream? Is the main reason just community backlash?
- codebeaker 13y ago
  As I wrote in the mailing list post, it'll be made mainstream this week, as I think it's a general improvement in all areas, at least it's faster, easier to debug, looks and works better, and has better out of the box compatibility with Rails (3 and 4).
nikoftime 13y ago
Hi Lee - Our company also uses Cap extensively and we really appreciate all your hard working building and maintaining it. I totally feel your pain reading responses about bugs, test coverage, etc. I urge you to consider whether you can get a couple of trusted allies or colleagues involved in putting Cap 3 out. I think it could be a huge boon to those of us who like the idea of modularized code and perhaps you can find a buffer or person who is willing to field some or all of the influx of bug reports (directly ask the community if so!)
- codebeaker 13y ago
  Tom `seenmyfate` Clements has been helping to support me over the last three months when I've been very burned out, and has really taken my vision for v3 and made it reality where I wouldn't have been able to. He'll always be around taking care of Capistrano as his company grants him some 20% free time to work on it, I trust him implicitly, and he already has deploy and unregulated commit access. Tom, if you are on HN, you're the only reason this project has been able to come as far as it has. Thank you.
  - tomdefi 13y ago
    It's been a pleasure, I'm really proud of what we've built so far. I hope that following a long and well deserved break you'll find yourself itching to return. No-one can deny you've gone above and beyond with a very demanding project, maybe with v2 retired and some additional support the overhead will come down to a much more manageable level.
gravitronic 13y ago
We use capistrano at Shopify for our main rails project and countless smaller projects. Thanks for your efforts.
sandGorgon 13y ago
Kickstarter ? I mean for something as operationally critical like Capistrano, why dont you seriously raise money on Kickstarter, outsource some of the testcases, etc. and be more productive overall. And please feel free to raise money to fix RubyGems as well ;)
- palidanx 13y ago
  I don't know how this would vibe in the open source community, but I'd definitely donate to help out a Capistrano project.
- martinkallstrom 13y ago
  Running a Kickstarter project is not recommended for someone close to burning out.
mikkelewis 13y ago
Lee, we use Capistrano at Scribd for our main Rails app, QA servers and countless other Ruby/Java services. In a world of complaints, we haven't had a single complaint about Capistrano. Thank you.
hannesfostie 13y ago
Thank you so much for Capistrano. We use it on a daily basis (several times) and built http://capo.io http://capo.io to make it easier to re-use deploy scripts. I'm going to take a closer look into the source code and try to help out with issues. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while so I hope I can at least help out a little bit here
kintamanimatt 13y ago
Maybe you need to take some time off completely if you're this burned out. Go travel and come back to software and life in a few months to a year. Maybe you'll be inspired to start something new, or maybe there will be something completely different you'll want to do. You'll always be the creator of Capistrano and for this your reputation will live on. If you've got clients that love you, your business will also thrive. I think your fear of letting go is probably unwarranted, and in any event your happiness should come first.
- npsimons 13y ago
  Have to second this; your love and dedication is too much to lose, both for the community and for yourself. Take a break, ignore the haters, stay happy.
kule 13y ago
Just wanted to add my thanks for such a great tool. I've been using cap since the rails 1.x days and it's always worked for me like a charm - I'm so grateful you stepped up to the plate to create & maintain it. Maybe you can find a way to delegate the bits you don't like about maintaining Capistrano so you don't need to directly manage it yourself? This is probably niave and maybe you are doing this already with v3 but it occurs to me if rails is the main cause of the headaches perhaps you can split that part into a cap-rails gem that is separately managed then you could hand over the reigns to someone else? Anyways, as mentioned, thank you for a great tool - I very much hope you find a solution that helps you feel good about the situation.
politician 13y ago
Thank you for all of your hard work on Capistrano. We use cap extensively at Simply Measured... as well as a "TurboGC" version of Ruby on an LTS version of Linux (hah!). Perhaps in the future something like containers will provide a better way forward, but for now cap is irreplaceable.
Axsuul 13y ago
Hey Lee, just wanted to say thanks for making Capistrano. It's awesome and it's made the world a better place.
tomphoolery 13y ago
I just want to say that I love Capistrano. Even though I don't use it all the time, I still think it's a really great way of deploying when you aren't in a container-based workflow and you just want a quick way of running remote commands from your local machine. As for your comment, "Ruby is pathologically difficult to install correctly on modern Linux distributions", I disagree wholeheartedly with this. It may be more difficult to install than a simple `apt-get`, but if you're used to compiling from source and you know what the hard dependencies are, it's really not a huge problem. ruby-install and ruby-build of course make this easier but those tools don't require the use of RVM or rbenv, especially on a machine where you know there will only be one Ruby. However, you're correct in the assumption that Ruby could be a lot easier to install if the language creators would move towards that. That said, I think there are a lot of people who are unfairly blaming you for their own misunderstandings of what these tools do and how they are used. For example, chruby or rbenv is absolutely vital on my dev machine because I work with projects using different versions of Ruby. But it's just bad practice to have a production box running multiple versions of Ruby, in my opinion. I really feel that the users you've interacted with may have been frustrated by their own misunderstanding of the tools they're using, because it's really not as hard as a lot of people make it out to be...
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Ruby is awful to install for production.
  - bradleyland 13y ago
    I compile Ruby from source for all my deployments (Debian based). I only need to apt install a handful of build deps and the build goes off without a hitch every time. Can someone direct me to the common complaints, or outline the common complaints here?
    - lost-theory 13y ago
      Your method is sane, the problem is with RVM and rbenv, which everyone uses and depend on hacky implicit shell BS (rbenv less so, but it's still there). Build from source and use the full path to the interpreter is the only sane method IMO.
kaishiro 13y ago
Lee - We're a small dev shop in the greater Boston area and we use Capistrano exclusively for our deployment process. Frankly, I'm blown away that you've taken this as far as you already have, and completely understand your stance on the community at-large. I think I'd have to echo others before me in saying that sometimes you just need to step back and grab a cocktail. Take a few months away for the sake of self preservation. It's only code :) Thanks for all you've done.
t4567 13y ago
Let's say that you decide to continue. I think that you should get advice from elsewhere than here, from someone whose professional expertise is in the emotions. Before everyone leaps to conclusions, I'd better clarify - I am not saying there's anything wrong with you - I am not excusing the crass behavior which is getting you down. What I'm saying is that there are almost certainly skills you can learn which will stop this getting to you. I don't know exactly what they are, and most people here don't either (although they will passionately sell you the hammer which worked for their particular nail). Ask an expert.
conatus 13y ago
Just to say, I love Capistrano - its a great product that I use almost every day. I introduced it at one place I worked and it took deployment time from painstaking hours to minutes. Thanks very much for your efforts and I am sorry you feel the need to step down from maintenance.
damncabbage 13y ago
Thank you so very much for your efforts. We use Capistrano at Bigcommerce to deploy our apps and components, and it's saved us from an inevitable pile of shell scripts. :-)
r7000 13y ago
I have never commented anywhere about Capistrano. But, it has been part of a toolchain that has brought me success and improved my life. Thank you very much for all you have done.

mtarnovan 13y ago

As I have used Capistrano on many projects, I want to thank you for your hard work and assure you that it has been much appreciated.

beachstartup 13y ago

if you can't find a successor - just keep in mind that people don't tend to step up unless there is a vacuum. if you were to step down, someone would step up, especially in a community as large as the one you're in. if it's destroying you, leave. go on a long vacation. it's not worth it. there's no shame or guilt in taking a break or passing on your work.

gnufied 13y ago

Hey Lee, I am yet to look into v3 stuff closely, but if you think it is better why not make maintstream? Is the main reason just community backlash?

codebeaker 13y ago
As I wrote in the mailing list post, it'll be made mainstream this week, as I think it's a general improvement in all areas, at least it's faster, easier to debug, looks and works better, and has better out of the box compatibility with Rails (3 and 4).

nikoftime 13y ago

Hi Lee - Our company also uses Cap extensively and we really appreciate all your hard working building and maintaining it. I totally feel your pain reading responses about bugs, test coverage, etc. I urge you to consider whether you can get a couple of trusted allies or colleagues involved in putting Cap 3 out. I think it could be a huge boon to those of us who like the idea of modularized code and perhaps you can find a buffer or person who is willing to field some or all of the influx of bug reports (directly ask the community if so!)

codebeaker 13y ago
Tom `seenmyfate` Clements has been helping to support me over the last three months when I've been very burned out, and has really taken my vision for v3 and made it reality where I wouldn't have been able to. He'll always be around taking care of Capistrano as his company grants him some 20% free time to work on it, I trust him implicitly, and he already has deploy and unregulated commit access. Tom, if you are on HN, you're the only reason this project has been able to come as far as it has. Thank you.
- tomdefi 13y ago
  It's been a pleasure, I'm really proud of what we've built so far. I hope that following a long and well deserved break you'll find yourself itching to return. No-one can deny you've gone above and beyond with a very demanding project, maybe with v2 retired and some additional support the overhead will come down to a much more manageable level.

gravitronic 13y ago

We use capistrano at Shopify for our main rails project and countless smaller projects. Thanks for your efforts.

sandGorgon 13y ago

Kickstarter ? I mean for something as operationally critical like Capistrano, why dont you seriously raise money on Kickstarter, outsource some of the testcases, etc. and be more productive overall. And please feel free to raise money to fix RubyGems as well ;)

palidanx 13y ago
I don't know how this would vibe in the open source community, but I'd definitely donate to help out a Capistrano project.
martinkallstrom 13y ago
Running a Kickstarter project is not recommended for someone close to burning out.

mikkelewis 13y ago

Lee, we use Capistrano at Scribd for our main Rails app, QA servers and countless other Ruby/Java services. In a world of complaints, we haven't had a single complaint about Capistrano. Thank you.

hannesfostie 13y ago

Thank you so much for Capistrano. We use it on a daily basis (several times) and built http://capo.io http://capo.io to make it easier to re-use deploy scripts. I'm going to take a closer look into the source code and try to help out with issues. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while so I hope I can at least help out a little bit here

kintamanimatt 13y ago

Maybe you need to take some time off completely if you're this burned out. Go travel and come back to software and life in a few months to a year. Maybe you'll be inspired to start something new, or maybe there will be something completely different you'll want to do. You'll always be the creator of Capistrano and for this your reputation will live on. If you've got clients that love you, your business will also thrive. I think your fear of letting go is probably unwarranted, and in any event your happiness should come first.

npsimons 13y ago
Have to second this; your love and dedication is too much to lose, both for the community and for yourself. Take a break, ignore the haters, stay happy.

kule 13y ago

Just wanted to add my thanks for such a great tool. I've been using cap since the rails 1.x days and it's always worked for me like a charm - I'm so grateful you stepped up to the plate to create & maintain it. Maybe you can find a way to delegate the bits you don't like about maintaining Capistrano so you don't need to directly manage it yourself? This is probably niave and maybe you are doing this already with v3 but it occurs to me if rails is the main cause of the headaches perhaps you can split that part into a cap-rails gem that is separately managed then you could hand over the reigns to someone else? Anyways, as mentioned, thank you for a great tool - I very much hope you find a solution that helps you feel good about the situation.

politician 13y ago

Thank you for all of your hard work on Capistrano. We use cap extensively at Simply Measured... as well as a "TurboGC" version of Ruby on an LTS version of Linux (hah!). Perhaps in the future something like containers will provide a better way forward, but for now cap is irreplaceable.

Axsuul 13y ago

Hey Lee, just wanted to say thanks for making Capistrano. It's awesome and it's made the world a better place.

tomphoolery 13y ago

I just want to say that I love Capistrano. Even though I don't use it all the time, I still think it's a really great way of deploying when you aren't in a container-based workflow and you just want a quick way of running remote commands from your local machine. As for your comment, "Ruby is pathologically difficult to install correctly on modern Linux distributions", I disagree wholeheartedly with this. It may be more difficult to install than a simple `apt-get`, but if you're used to compiling from source and you know what the hard dependencies are, it's really not a huge problem. ruby-install and ruby-build of course make this easier but those tools don't require the use of RVM or rbenv, especially on a machine where you know there will only be one Ruby. However, you're correct in the assumption that Ruby could be a lot easier to install if the language creators would move towards that. That said, I think there are a lot of people who are unfairly blaming you for their own misunderstandings of what these tools do and how they are used. For example, chruby or rbenv is absolutely vital on my dev machine because I work with projects using different versions of Ruby. But it's just bad practice to have a production box running multiple versions of Ruby, in my opinion. I really feel that the users you've interacted with may have been frustrated by their own misunderstanding of the tools they're using, because it's really not as hard as a lot of people make it out to be...

pessimizer 13y ago
Ruby is awful to install for production.
- bradleyland 13y ago
  I compile Ruby from source for all my deployments (Debian based). I only need to apt install a handful of build deps and the build goes off without a hitch every time. Can someone direct me to the common complaints, or outline the common complaints here?
  - lost-theory 13y ago
    Your method is sane, the problem is with RVM and rbenv, which everyone uses and depend on hacky implicit shell BS (rbenv less so, but it's still there). Build from source and use the full path to the interpreter is the only sane method IMO.

kaishiro 13y ago

Lee - We're a small dev shop in the greater Boston area and we use Capistrano exclusively for our deployment process. Frankly, I'm blown away that you've taken this as far as you already have, and completely understand your stance on the community at-large. I think I'd have to echo others before me in saying that sometimes you just need to step back and grab a cocktail. Take a few months away for the sake of self preservation. It's only code :) Thanks for all you've done.

t4567 13y ago

Let's say that you decide to continue. I think that you should get advice from elsewhere than here, from someone whose professional expertise is in the emotions. Before everyone leaps to conclusions, I'd better clarify - I am not saying there's anything wrong with you - I am not excusing the crass behavior which is getting you down. What I'm saying is that there are almost certainly skills you can learn which will stop this getting to you. I don't know exactly what they are, and most people here don't either (although they will passionately sell you the hammer which worked for their particular nail). Ask an expert.

conatus 13y ago

Just to say, I love Capistrano - its a great product that I use almost every day. I introduced it at one place I worked and it took deployment time from painstaking hours to minutes. Thanks very much for your efforts and I am sorry you feel the need to step down from maintenance.

damncabbage 13y ago

Thank you so very much for your efforts. We use Capistrano at Bigcommerce to deploy our apps and components, and it's saved us from an inevitable pile of shell scripts. :-)

r7000 13y ago

I have never commented anywhere about Capistrano. But, it has been part of a toolchain that has brought me success and improved my life. Thank you very much for all you have done.