Strategy for cleaning up Vercel deployments

[einarpersson]

Summary

Background / context

I'm using a custom github workflow file with the vercel CLI instead of the github autodeploy integeration feature (since I need more control regarding the order of deployment). I have one temporary database deployed for every pull request branch (which is torn down when the PR is closed). A new vercel deployment is created on every push to the pull request branch. In fact this is a bit unnecessary since I really only need one active deployment for every PR at any given time (namely, the latest commit on that branch).

Everything works fine, but the result is that I'm creating a pile of vercel deployments which are never removed and will continue to grow until their mass makes them implode into a black hole. This feels wasteful, and I just don't like the idea of a bunch of URLs hanging around out there with no purpose.

Question

How can I systematically clean up after myself? I would ideally like to find out

1. A way of removing all deployments for a given branch
2. A way of removing the latest deployment for a given branch so that I can modify my workflow to always only have one existing deployment per pull request branch (nice to have but not necessary)

I'm aware that when running vercel deploy the generated deployment url is returned. But it is non trivial to capture these generated urls and store them somewhere in a CI environment and then later in another workflow fetch them.

I expected it to be possible to "delete all deployments for a given branch", or running vercel list with some filter specifying a branch or something. I have explored the vercel CLI documentation but it is very sparse to say the least. Take for example vercel list --meta key1=value1 key2=value2. Could this maybe be used? I don't know since the available meta data keys are not specified anywhere.

Thank you for any assistance, and please feel free to ask further questions if something is not clear.

Additional information

Parts of my workflow file

name: Pull request workflow
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, closed]

...

deploy-app:
    if: ${{ github.event.action != 'closed' }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: deploy-db
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Install Vercel CLI
        run: npm install --global vercel@canary
      - name: Deploy Project Artifacts to Vercel
        run: vercel --env POCKETBASE_URL="https://${{ env.FLY_APP_NAME }}.fly.dev" --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}

...

  cleanup:
    if: ${{ github.event.action == 'closed' }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: superfly/flyctl-actions/setup-flyctl@master
      - name: Remove Fly App
        run: flyctl apps destroy ${{ env.FLY_APP_NAME }} -y
      # CLEANUP VERCEL HERE?

EDIT

Note: I found a specification for the git metadata here but when I query the Vercel API I only get either githubCommitRef": "main" or githubCommitRef": "HEAD" which doesn't really help.

I also tried setting a metadata key on deploy (which worked!) vercel --meta foo=${{ env.bar }} with the hope that this could be used to use it as a flag when looking up and cleaning up deployments. However, the vercel list <project> --scope <team> --meta foo=bar is not really useful since it's output is not possible to pipe into a script. And the Vercel API https://api.vercel.com/v6/deployments does not even support using meta as a query parameter.

I am lost.

[jsuplidoalinsub]

Hi, do we have any updates on this one? I am also having the same issue

[einarpersson]

I don't know if it helps your use-case but I am doing this to capture the preview url and re-use it in another job

  deploy-app:
    if: ${{ github.event.action != 'closed' }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: deploy-db
    outputs:
      PREVIEW_URL: ${{ steps.deploy-app.outputs.PREVIEW_URL }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Install Vercel CLI
        run: npm install --global vercel@canary
      - name: Deploy Project Artifacts to Vercel and save deployment URL
        id: deploy-app
        run: |
          vercel --debug -e ********** --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }} 2>&1 | tee vercel.log
          cat vercel.log
          preview_url=$(grep -o 'Preview: https://[^ ]*' vercel.log | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
          if [ -z "$preview_url" ]; then
            echo "Preview URL not found in log"
            exit 1
          fi
          echo "Found Preview URL: $preview_url"
          echo "PREVIEW_URL=$preview_url" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

This can be used in other jobs (like e2e and potentially clean up although have not implemented it yet) like so ${{ needs.deploy-app.outputs.PREVIEW_URL }}

[leerob]

You can now configure the retention period for deployments through the dashboard and CLI.

For example, canceled and errored deployments might be set to 30 days retention, while production deployments might be set to 1 year. Recently deleted deployments are shown in your project settings and can be instantly restored within 30 days of deletion.

Learn more in our documentation.