This gem provide some Capistrano tasks to handle a database.yml file dynamically on the deployment server.

As you now, it is a bad idea to check the database credentials into the source control for security reasons.

So this gem provides a way to create and handle a shared database.yml file for you on your deployment servers. With this gem you don't need anymore to checkin a database.yml file with all the secrets of your database servers.

Add the gem to your Rails 3 Project that uses Bundler

gem "rails_database_yml"

Use Bundler to install the gem

bundle install

Require the capistrano tasks in your config/deployment.rb

require "rails_database_yml/capistrano"

That's all.

This gem asks you in cap deploy:setup for all necessery parameters for your database connection. Afters this it creates a database.yml file in the folder shared/config.

On every cap deploy the gem creates a symlink to the shared database.yml under current/config. So your rails application has always a database.yml file that is always the same between all deployments.