I wrote a book on Kamal, deployment tool that's coming to Rails 8
Hi fellow readers of HN, Josef here again[0] with another book :). This time about Kamal. = Background When 37signals released their new deployment tool Kamal[1], I was intrigued since it fits well with my 'keep it simple' deployment philosophy. I slowly adopted the tool and today I deploy all new projects with Kamal. However, I have seen people giving it a go and giving up, because the initial documentation was not enough. So I sat down for a few weeks and wrote Kamal Handbook, the missing manual to Kamal. = What's Kamal? Kamal is an imperative deployment tool. It's basically a successor to…
In plain words
The Kamal Handbook is a comprehensive guide to Kamal, an imperative deployment tool designed as a modern successor to Capistrano for containerized applications. It is written for Rails developers who want to deploy applications using Docker without the complexity of Kubernetes. The handbook addresses gaps in Kamal's official documentation, helping users who struggled with initial adoption. Created by Josef, the guide covers practical deployment workflows for developers building with Rails 8 and beyond.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi fellow readers of HN, Josef here again[0] with another book :). This time about Kamal. = Background When 37signals released their new deployment tool Kamal[1], I was intrigued since it fits well with my 'keep it simple' deployment philosophy. I slowly adopted the tool and today I deploy all new projects with Kamal. However, I have seen people giving it a go and giving up, because the initial documentation was not enough. So I sat down for a few weeks and wrote Kamal Handbook, the missing manual to Kamal. = What's Kamal? Kamal is an imperative deployment tool. It's basically a successor to Capistrano, but for a container era. It's a simple wrapper around Docker and that's the whole beauty of it. 37signals created Kamal to self-host Basecamp and Hey as part of their pull out of the cloud (running managed K8s). It's expected to become a default gem for 'rails new' in Rails 8. = Kamal Handbook Kamal Handbook[2] is a short and to-the-point book on Kamal. I go through a first deploy, explain fundamental ideas, talk about configuration, show two more complex examples, and discuss topics like CD. It's under 100 pages including the code and illustrations. It's a first ever book on Kamal, available as a PDF and ePUB (tested on Kindle Paperwhite). The website features a small preview and I made one more[3] specially for SHOW HN. So far I sold something over 300 copies and I made the sale counter public for SHOW HN. I am around to answer any questions. Josef [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29540808 (SHOW HN of my previous book) [1] https://kamal-deploy.org/ (Kamal official page) [2] https://kamalmanual.com/handbook/ (Book official page) [3] https://kamalmanual.com/handbook/first-deploy-preview.pdf (SHOW HN preview)
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