ruby script/plugin install svn://svn.spattendesign.com/svn/plugins/run_tests_on_deploy

The plugin adds the following tasks:

deploy:run_tests
  deploy:without_tests

Once installed, running

  cap deploy

will run all of your tests before doing the final symlink. If the tests fail, the symlink will not be created and your deployment will roll back.

The deploy:run_tests task is executed before the symlink task. The run_tests task does the following:

* prepares your test db with rake db:test:prepare
* runs all of your tests with "rake test" at a nice level of -10

The deploy:run_tests tasks won’t work if you call it by itself, as it runs from the release_path directory, which won’t exist unless called after deploy:update_code.

to deploy without tests:

  cap deploy:without_tests

you can also set the run_tests option to 0 from the command line like this:

  cap -S run_tests=0 deploy

this allows you to do things like deploying with migrations but without tests:

  cap -S run_tests=0 deploy:migrations

The original idea for the :run_tests task is from blog.testingrails.com/2006/9/4/running-tests-on-deploy-with-capistrano, which, sadly, seems to be defunct.
Installation

  script/plugin install run_tests_on_deploy

Capistrano configuration

This plugin requires Capistrano 2.0.0 or greater. To upgrade to the latest version (currently 2.1.0)

  gem install capistrano

Once the plug-in is installed, make sure that the recipes are seen by Capistrano

cap -T | grep deploy:without_tests

should return

  cap deploy:without_tests          # deploy without running tests

If capistrano is not seeing the deploy:without_tests task, then you need to update your Capfile.

(The following is from Jamis Buck, in groups.google.com/group/capistrano/browse_thread/thread/531ad32aff5fe5a8)

In Capistrano 2.1.0 or above: you can delete your Capify file in rails root, and then, from rails root, run

  capify .

If you do not want to delete your Capify file, or if you are using Capistrano 2.0.0, add the following line to your Capify file:

  Dir['vendor/plugins/*/recipes/*.rb'].each { |plugin| load(plugin) }

There is currently no advanced documentation for this plugin.