I have a rails 4 app deployed with capistrano. In my output there are a bunch of commands running that I do not understand at all. I'm trying to figure out why some of them fail, but the real problem is I don't know what they are doing at all.
Here is a typical example:
DEBUG [8020adb4] Running /usr/bin/env [ -L ~/apps/spo/releases/20160205133156/public/assets ] as [email protected]
DEBUG [8020adb4] Command: [ -L ~/apps/spo/releases/20160205133156/public/assets ]
DEBUG [8020adb4] Finished in 0.013 seconds with exit status 1 (failed).
I know that /usr/bin/env will run a program, but I have no idea what this part is trying to do:
[ -L ~apps/spo/releases/20160205133156/public/assets ]
Something like this: /usr/bin/env mkdir is easy to understand, it is running mkdir.
If anyone can explain what these [ -L ...] commands are doing I would greatly appreciate it!
The square brackets are an alternative syntax for the test command.
Which test is run depends on the expression you give, in this case it checks whether ~/apps/spo/releases/20160205133156/public/assets exists and is a symbolic link.
From man test:
-L FILE
FILE exists and is a symbolic link (same as -h)