It's a popular strategy for the web server to reference the current build via symlink, and to switch the symlink to deploy a new build
/var/www/current -> /var/www/build-1
Is this a problem for requests running when the symlink is switched, given that scripts reference other files during execution, and those files have been modified in the new build?
If so, do you think this disqualifies it as a strategy for a service that requires high-availability?
Is it a better strategy to update Nginx's config to reference the new build directly and run service nginx reload? I assume reload allows current requests to complete on the old build, while sending new requests to the new build.
If it's relevant, I'm specifically interest in PHP and Laravel.