[jdbeast00]

This probably isn't the best place for this question, but its somewhat related. We currently have a dev and prod environment that I can't install applications (like git) but i want to setup a better deployment process aside from just copying files. For various reasons development needs to be done on the dev server. I have tried using sshfs with git to commit changes in dev and deploy them to prod but it seems too slow. My next task was going to use something like fabric to script the process, but I am unsure if that is the best tool for the job.

My thinking was that a script would sync changes on the dev server to a intermediate staging server and commit the changes. For deployment to prod i'd like to copy just the files that changed up to production. Should I just write a shell script or are there better tools for the job?

[mercurial]

Fabric is a good choice for that. I'm worried that you don't seem to have any kind of release process in place. I hope you at least tag the code you are releasing.