Kamal Handbook
Kamal Handbook: The missing manual is a short and practical book on Kamal deployment tool. It's the first and currently the only book about Kamal.
Now in 2nd edition for Kamal 2.
Check out the book's website for more information.
Last revision: 3. 11. 2025 for Kamal 2.8.2.
What will you learn?
First, we explain what Kamal is, look how Kamals works on the surface, and go through the first deploy. Then we’ll dive more into Kamal’s server configuration and use the new knowledge for deploying 2 more complex examples. At last, we have a look on logging, debugging, CI/CD, and handling backups.
Foreword
Donal McBreen, Lead Programmer at 37signals, and one of the main contributors to Kamal, wrote the foreword to the 1st edition.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Workflow
- Prerequisites
- Installation
- The first deploy
- Provisioning
- Build configuration
- Server configuration
- Environment
- Kamal Proxy
- Destinations
- Volumes and data
- Assets
- Healthchecks
- Accessories
- Logging
- Maintenance
- Examples
- Debugging
- CI/CD
- Cron
- Backups
- Wrap-up
What you'll get?
You'll get PDF and ePUB copies. The ePUB is tested on Apple Books and Kindle.
FAQ
Which edition should I get?
The 2nd edition of the book covers Kamal 2.x releases while the previous edition covered Kamal 1.x releases. The latest release targets Kamal 2.0.
The Patron copy contains all editions and might come with early access and additional future bonuses.
Will I get free updates?
You get free updates for a given edition. The Patron copy gets free lifetime updates for all editions.
Is this book just for Rails?
Kamal is framework-independent and so I wrote the book in a general way, only mentioning assumptions about one's Dockerfile. Bring your Dockerfile and you are good.
Is this only for Ubuntu?
Kamal doesn't tie itself with any particular Linux flavor so you can use your favourite. The small provisioning examples in the book are tested against Ubuntu 22 LTS.
Author
Hello, I am Josef, a formal Linux packager at Red Hat and an author of Deployment from Scratch. Once I found Kamal, I dived in and never looked back. I am now running everything with Kamal for myself and my clients. In the book I am sharing everything I know, so you are confident to do the same.