How do you push updates to a deployed meteor app that has a filesystem?

Question

I have an app running on my own digitalocean VM that I'm trying to play around with to figure out how to run a meteor production server. I deployed it with meteor build, but now I'm a bit unsure about how to push updates. If I build a new tarball on my own machine, I will loose file references that my users have made to files in bundle/uploads, because the remote filesystem isn't incorporated into my local project. I can imagine some hacky ways to work around this, but besides hosting the files on s3 or another 3rd party server, is there any way to "hot code push" into the deployed app without needing to move files around on my server?

Am I crazy for wondering what the meteor equivalent of git push/pull is in production, or just ignorant?

Answer 1

You can use dokku (https://github.com/progrium/dokku). DigitalOcean allows you to create an instance pre-installed with dokku too.

Once you've set up your ssh keys, set the environment variables, ROOT_URL, PORT and MONGO_URL you can add that server as a git remote and simply git push to it.

Dokku will automatically build up the Meteor app and have it running, and keep it up to date whenever you git push.

I find Dokku is very convenient. There's also flynn and deis which are able to do the same in multi tenant environment with way more options.

Just one thing to keep in mind with this is to push the guys who own the repo to keep the Node version in the buildpack up to date. Meteor is a bit overzealous when it comes to using the latest version of Node and refusing older versions.

Answer 2

Meteor does lack a bit in this department. I can't remember where I may have heard this, but I believe they intend on adding this very popular Meteor deployment package to their library. Short of switching to a more compatible host, I'm not aware of any better solutions.