Symfony2, Symfony3 build and deployment best practices

Upload your code to the production server

Tag a version of your code as a release

git tag ${TAG_NAME}
git push --tags

Download a tagged version from Git as tar.gz archive

From any git server

git archive --format=tar.gz -o "/path/to/archive/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}.tar.gz" --prefix="${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}/" ${TAG_NAME}

From Github

curl -L --user "${GIT_USERNAME}:${GIT_PASSWORD}" --output "/path/to/archive/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}.tar.gz" "https://github.com/${GIT_ACCOUNT}/${GIT_REPOSITORY}/archive/${TAG_NAME}.tar.gz"

Create a release directory (Creating seperate folder for each release is strongly recommended)

mkdir -p /path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}

Extract contents of archive to release directory

tar -zxf "/path/to/archive/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}.tar.gz" --directory "/path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}" --strip-components 1

Copy parameters.yml contains production parameters to project folder

cp "/path/to/parameters/${GIT_REPOSITORY}.yml" "/path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}/app/config/parameters.yml"

Post install tasks

cd "/path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}"

For running post-install-cmd scripts run in the production environment

export SYMFONY_ENV=prod

Install vendors

composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

Clear cache

/usr/bin/php app/console cache:clear --env=prod --no-debug

For Symfony3

/usr/bin/php bin/console cache:clear --env=prod --no-debug

Dump your assets (If you need)

/usr/bin/php app/console assetic:dump --env=prod --no-debug

For Symfony3

/usr/bin/php bin/console assetic:dump --env=prod --no-debug

Executes (or dumps) the SQL needed to update the database schema to match the current mapping metadata.

/usr/bin/php app/console doctrine:schema:update --force

For Symfony3

/usr/bin/php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --force

Give necesssary permissions (in this example, www-data belongs to nginx)

chown -R www-data: "/path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}"

Finally, symlink release folder to web server root

ln -sf "/path/to/release/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}" "/var/www/${GIT_REPOSITORY}"

If you use op-code cache with php-fpm, restart php5-fpm for invalidating cache every release. If you're using Apache with mod_php, you should restart it.

Don't forget to disable op-code cache on CLI interface using opcache.enable_cli (in php.ini) configuration option to prevent inconsistent results. You can check quickly with $ php -i | grep opcache.enable

Notes on deploying to multiple servers:

Compress files for easy transfer

tar -zcf "/path/to/build/folder/${GIT_REPOSITORY}-${TAG_NAME}" .

Extract files to same directory on destination server

Following Ansible tasks helps to distribute builds to other servers

 - name: Create release directory
   file:
     path={{release_directory}}
     state=directory

 - name: Extracting release
   unarchive:
     src={{build_directory}}/{{project_name}}-{{release_version}}.tar.gz
     dest={{release_directory}}
     owner=www-data

 - name: Symlinking release
   file:
     src={{release_directory}}
     dest={{application_directory}}
     state=link

 - name: Start PHP5-FPM
   service:
     name=php5-fpm
     state=reloaded