Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Capistrano VS GNU Make

Compare Capistrano VS GNU Make and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Capistrano logo Capistrano

A remote server automation and deployment tool written in Ruby

GNU Make logo GNU Make

GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.
  • Capistrano Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-18
  • GNU Make Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-12

Capistrano features and specs

  • Automated Deployment
    Capistrano automates the deployment process, reducing the risk of human error and saving time by allowing for continuous deployment.
  • SSH Support
    Leverages SSH for secure communication with servers, ensuring a safe and encrypted connection which is essential for production environments.
  • Customizable Workflows
    Provides the flexibility to customize deployment workflows and tasks to fit unique requirements, offering more control over the deployment process.
  • Rollbacks
    Supports easy rollbacks to previous versions, which is crucial in quickly reverting changes in case of deployment issues.
  • Multi-Server Support
    Enables deployment to multiple servers, making it suitable for applications requiring load balancing or distributed systems.

Possible disadvantages of Capistrano

  • Ruby Dependency
    Requires Ruby, which can be a limitation for teams not using Ruby for other parts of their stack or have restrictions on adding new dependencies.
  • Initial Configuration Complexity
    Setting up Capistrano can be complex, especially for those unfamiliar with Ruby or SSH, requiring an additional learning curve.
  • Limited Windows Support
    Primarily designed for Unix-based systems, which may present challenges when deploying to or from Windows environments.
  • Plugin Dependency Management
    While powerful plugins exist, managing them and their dependencies can lead to complexities and potential conflicts over time.
  • Not Ideal for Non-Ruby Projects
    Originally designed for Ruby on Rails applications, making it less seamless for projects that don't fit this framework.

GNU Make features and specs

  • Portability
    GNU Make is highly portable and can be used across various Unix-like operating systems as well as on Windows.
  • Dependency Management
    It efficiently handles complex dependencies between various parts of the software, ensuring that changes are propagated properly.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source software, GNU Make is freely available and can be modified according to user needs.
  • Wide Adoption
    It is widely adopted in the industry, which means that there is extensive documentation and a large community for support.
  • Efficiency
    GNU Make speeds up the build process by only recompiling the necessary parts of the codebase.

Possible disadvantages of GNU Make

  • Complex Syntax
    The syntax of GNU Makefiles can become very complex, especially for large projects, making them hard to read and maintain.
  • Limited Cross-Platform Scripting
    While the tool itself is cross-platform, Makefiles can sometimes include shell commands that are not portable.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Beginners may find it challenging to grasp the concepts and syntax of GNU Make, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Debugging Difficulty
    Debugging Makefiles can be difficult, with limited tools available to trace or step through the make process.
  • Performance Bottlenecks
    For extremely large projects, performance can become an issue, as the evaluation of dependencies might become slow.

Capistrano videos

Ranch Road Boots EPIC In-Depth Review: Capistrano Black

More videos:

  • Review - Armani Exchange Capistrano watch review
  • Review - Review Americas Best Value Laguna Inn & Suites (San Juan Capistrano (CA), United States)

GNU Make videos

No GNU Make videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Capistrano and GNU Make)
DevOps Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Front End Package Manager
Continuous Integration
100 100%
0% 0
JS Build Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Capistrano and GNU Make. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Capistrano seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Capistrano mentions (10)

  • Multiple deployments and High Availability with Mina and Ruby on Rails
    However this model is generic to any client-server / monolithic / micro services approach and to any languages and frameworks. In my project I use Mina (Formerly using Capistrano), so that means that on each deployment the script makes a SSH-in to the remote machine and performs the deployment process: Git clone, Git pull, rake db:migrate assets:precompile, puma:restart, etc… Before using Capistrano I was doing... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Type of programming language.
    I think Capistrano is a good example. Their homepage snippet shows you what a DSL is. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Peace - Zero Stress Automation framework + website
    I think it's something like https://capistranorb.com/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How do I learn production/deployment process?
    That should give you lots of stuff to research but I'll leave you with a final point: Every project is going to be different. Use the right tool for the right job; for a small application you definitely don't need Kubernetes, you might be fine without any pipeline at all. For example, Ruby on Rails projects can use a tool called capistrano to script deploys and you can run that from your local machine any time you... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Jenkins CI or CI/CD
    I personally consider Jenkins a Task Runner that has a massive collection of CI plugins. Anyone can do deployments/delivery from a task runner, but any deployments I had to do in Jenkins ended up needing custom code written to do the actual work. This isn't unique to Jenkins; before the days of kubernetes, we had tools like capistrano or Config Management tools like Chef and Puppet that were capable of doing... Source: over 2 years ago
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GNU Make mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of GNU Make yet. Tracking of GNU Make recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Capistrano and GNU Make, you can also consider the following products

Ansible - Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine

CMake - CMake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software.

Deployer - Deployment Tool for PHP

SCons - SCons is an Open Source software construction tool—that is, a next-generation build tool.

Driver Talent - Driver Talent is an easy to use application, designed to help you get the drivers you need for your system.

SBT - SBT is a build tool for Scala, like Ant or Maven but with hieroglyphics.