Roger Fong wrote:

I was curious about what process others are using to deploy new software across servers. Does wikipedia use capistrano or something similar?

We use a multiplexing SSH client ("dsh", of which several versions exist out on the net) for various maintenance tasks and commands.

The actual web applications run off of local disk copies (synced as needed via rsync launched via dsh).

Most application state is in networked MySQL databases (permanent) and memcached clouds (transient). File storage for uploaded and generated images is shared via NFS.

General machine configuration and software installation is via customized metapackages for our Ubuntu setup.

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)