Build and Deploy

Overview

This site is deployed utilizing Github Actions for continuous integration (CI) combined with AWS Amplify's branch-based continuous deployment (CD).

• GitHub Actions (CI)
  • Project Stats Generation
• Staging/Production Deployment (CD)
  • Production Deployment
  • Staging Deployment

Github Actions (CI)

• Generation of project-stats data
  • Triggered every 4 hours
• Docs/Wiki Sync
  • Triggered on pushes to develop branch when the docs directory changes
  • Triggered when wiki is edited (though this is discouraged - all changes should happen in the docs directory via pull request)
• Pull Request build/test/lint checking
  • Triggered on pull requests being opened
• Release management
  • Triggered on pushes to develop following the Conventional Commits standard.

Project-Stats Generation

Every 4 hours, the project-stats workflow kicks off. After running this Action, it will commit and push to both the develop and main branch. Then, this will trigger builds on Amplify.

Staging/Production Deployment (CD)

Amplify is connected to the main and deploy branches, and has webhooks set on the repo that listen for pushes to those branches. On push, an atomic deploy is triggered. If the build/deploy fails, the site will continue to run with the existing version.

Note: Any commit with [skip-cd] will bypass the build process in Amplify.

Production Deployment

Production deployments are exclusively handled through merging a Pull Request into the main branch. If an ad-hoc deployment is required, please reach out to a project maintainer.

Opening a Pull Request: the direction should be develop -> main. Once all checks have passed, merge via Merge Pull Request option (using Create a merge commit as the strategy). This will merge the commits in from develop (effectively "catching" main up with develop), plus issue the merge commit on top.

Merging: use a Conventional Commit message indicating this is a release:

chore(release): updating production to vX.X.X

The intent is: semantic-release issued a new tag/release on the develop branch, so we are now promoting that to production. If for whatever reason there wasn't a release, include what the update is and provide the release at the end of the message:

chore(release): content updates but no new site features [vX.X.X]

Note: Since semantic-release is only running on the develop branch, there won't be a new tag/release cut from the main branch. We might revisit this idea in the future if the tooling evolves.

Staging Deployment

Staging deployments will happen frequently, and should be used to QA changes prior to opening a Pull Request to main.

These deployments happen automagically every time a commit is made to develop. This is handled via Amplify's Git-based continuous deployment.

If it seems like builds/deploys should be occurring but aren't, please contact a project maintainer.

Final Note: PRs that are opened from a branch in this repo (not forks) will generate preview links on Amplify automatically.