I am mulling the idea of writing an Elixir deployment book covering multiple deployment methods. Ansible will be used for server setup/deployment (build servers and run-time servers), then CI/CD deployment to Kubernetes was going to be covered in the second half. Initially I was going to aim for LeanPub for distribution. Wasn’t sure how many folks would be interested in such a book TBH.

I’d suggest trying not to go into ansible and server setup. That is a large topic in itself which will distract from the main topic.

I think there are 2 audiences (well really 3 but the third can look elsewhere for details on setting up servers with ansible, since that is not specific to Elixir): 1) those who need to run small projects and act as the main ops person as well – likely good enough to discuss how to use with systemd in their case 2) those at a company who need to fit into the existing organizations infrastructure.

The direction we are going with adoptingerlang.org is to mainly cover (2) when the organization is using kubernetes. The systemd case is covered in an appendix.

Since your book is solely about deployment I wouldn’t restrict to just k8s like adoptingerlang but just like we don’t cover setting up k8s (besides pointing to dev tools like microk8s and to google kubernetes engine for prod) I’d warn against it becoming an operations book instead of an Elixir book

Me! Just do it, now!

Thank you for sharing.

True. A chapter on using ansible for deploying, unpacking, starting/upgrading a release might be good.

Another suggestion, stick to what you actually use. If you (frigidcode) have experience with production ansible deloyment then maybe don’t also include a puppet/chef chapter. You could instead get collaborators who do use puppet or chef (or one of the many other offerings) to write those chapters.

The reason being, those who have used these tools in anger will know bits that are important to highlight – though obviously need someone who isn’t experienced with these tools to do a review because someone experienced will also accidentally leave out plenty of useful information that someone new will need.

Not to say writing and publishing guides while learning a tool isn’t really useful, I’m just referring explicitly to a book about real world production deployment, as opposed to a “getting up and running with Puppet and Elixir” post.