This is a simple extension to Capistrano that adds a few pre-deploy syntax-checks for source files.

Currently supported syntaxes are Ruby, ERB, JavaScript (using the Google Closure compiler) and HAML.

Installation

Install via gems:

gem install capistrano-syntax-checking

Usage with Rails and Capistrano's standard Rails recipe

To use with a Rails application with sensible default, put the following at the top of your Capfile:

require 'capistrano/recipes/syntax_checking'

Then add this at the bottom of your Capfile, outside the namespace deploy do ... block:

before 'deploy:update', :check_syntax

To invoke only certain checks, such as only Ruby and ERB:

before 'deploy:update', "check_syntax:ruby"
before 'deploy:update', "check_syntax:erb"

Using without Capistrano's standard Rails recipe, or with non-Rails apps

If you are not using the Capistrano's built-in Rails support, start the same way:

require 'capistrano/recipes/syntax_checking'

Then override all the paths to match your application exactly:

set :syntax_check_paths,
  :ruby => ["lib/ruby"]     # These are just examples
  :erb => ["lib/erb"],
  :javascript => ["public/js"]

Then make sure the syntax checks are invoked before your deploy task. If your deploy task is named "push", then:

desc "Full deploy ahead!"
task :push do
  # ... your stuff here ...
end
before :push, :check_syntax

Refer to Capistrano's documentation on how to otherwise structure your deployment file.

Using the API directly

To use with any other kind of application, you will want to use your own tasks that provide custom options to the syntax-checker. Start by putting this at the top of your Capfile:

require 'capistrano/ext/syntax_checking'

Then build your own tasks by calling the syntax check API, perhaps like this:

task :deploy do
  Capistrano::SyntaxChecking.check_javascript('src', :verbose => false)
end

Configuration

You can override the paths that the checker will look in. For the Rails recipe, the paths are the usual directoryes -- app, lib and config for Ruby files, app/views for ERB, and so on. If your Rails layout is a little different, then you may have to extend the path list.

To override the path list, set the syntax_check_paths variable in Capistrano. For example:

set :syntax_check_paths, :ruby => %w(app lib bin config vendor)

The keys you may override are :ruby, :erb, :javascript and :haml.

You can also override the task output verbosity:

 set :syntax_check_verbose, false

Licensing

• This source code is copyright Alexander Staubo. The code is licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for the license text.

• The library comes with a binary compiled version of the Google Closure compiler, which is copyright Google Corp. and licensed under the Apache License. See the file LICENSE.closure for the license text.