A Rake Task to precompile the assets and then make a tarball of the rails project for deploys.

build.sh

#clean up the existing files
rm -rf pkg tmp/cache public/assets
bundle exec rake build_package

build_package.rake

if Rails.env.development?
  require 'rake/packagetask'
  
  desc 'precompiles the assets and builds a tarball of the rails application'
  task :build_package => "assets:precompile" do

    Rake::PackageTask.new("project-name", :noversion) do |p|
      p.need_tar_gz = true
      p.package_files.add %w(app/**/* config/**/* db/**/* lib/**/* public/**/* script/**/* vendor/assets/**/* Capfile Gemfile Gemfile.lock REVISION Rakefile config.ru)
      p.package_files.exclude 'config/database.yml'
    end

    Rake::Task['package'].invoke
  end

end