I am looking for a way to easily deploy a nodejs app via a command line script.
I found one solution: https://github.com/Skookum/nimbus
I also heard that the whole thing can be done with git and post commit hooks.
What would people recommend?
edit: i am deploying it to my own box where i have root
You have two options on a self hosted setup.
Do it all yourself
This entails git post-receive hooks. In short you setup your production box to host a copy of your repository, on your local machine you setup a remote, let's call the remote production.
Now when you run git push production master on your local machine, the updates are sent and the server executes the post-receive hook on your server which runs whatever you wish.
Actions you may want are: checking out/writing the data in the repo to files/folders (the git repo on the server is stored as a bare repo); restarting your webserver; notifying you that there's been a deployment etc.
I'd suggest reading up on it at http://git-scm.com/book/en/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks and taking a look at a few tutorials, this one (http://ryanflorence.com/deploying-websites-with-a-tiny-git-hook/) looks prety legit.
Use a service to manage it for you, http://www.deployhq.com/ is the only one that springs to mind but I'm sure there's other.
Good Luck and Happy Hacking :)
There is a tool called shipit.js (https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit) which allows you to perform different deployment tasks like:
You create a config file, and then runs: npx shipit deploy and all tasks you specify are performed. In case of failure, it has a rollback mechanism.
There is a nice screencast about it: https://youtu.be/8PpBySjkWEM.
