Branch Deploy Action 🚀

A GitHub Action to enable branch deployments using IssueOps!

This Action does the heavy lifting for you to enable branch deployments:

🔍 Detects when IssueOps commands are used on a pull request
✏️ Configurable - Choose your command syntax, environment, noop trigger, base branch, reaction, and more
✔️ Respects your branch protection settings configured for the repo
🗨️ Comments and reacts to your IssueOps commands
🚀 Triggers GitHub deployments for you with simple configuration
🔓 Deploy locks to prevent multiple deployments from clashing

Available Commands 💬

.deploy - Deploy a pull request
.deploy noop - Deploy a pull request in noop mode
.deploy to <environment> - Deploy a pull request to a specific environment
.lock - Create a deployment lock
.lock --reason - Create a deployment lock with a custom reason
.lock --details - View details about a deployment lock
.unlock - Remove a deployment lock

These commands are all fully customizable and are just an example using this Action's defaults

Demo 🎥

A video demo showing how IssueOps on a pull request works using this Action

demo.mp4

View the pull request that created this demo here

Turbo Quickstart ⚡

A quick section to get you started with this Action

Usage 📝

Basic usage assuming all defaults:

- name: branch-deploy
  id: branch-deploy
  uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X

Advanced usage with custom configuration:

- name: branch-deploy
  id: branch-deploy
  uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
  with:
    trigger: ".deploy"
    reaction: "eyes"
    environment: "production"
    noop_trigger: "noop"
    stable_branch: "main"
    prefix_only: "true"

Example 📚

Check out a super simple workflow example using this Action to quickly get up and running with branch deployments

name: "branch deploy demo"

# The workflow to execute on is comments that are newly created
on:
  issue_comment:
    types: [created]

# Permissions needed for reacting and adding comments for IssueOps commands
permissions:
  pull-requests: write
  deployments: write
  contents: write

jobs:
  demo:
    if: ${{ github.event.issue.pull_request }} # only run on pull request comments
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # Execute IssueOps branch deployment logic, hooray!
      # This will be used to "gate" all future steps below and conditionally trigger steps/deployments
      - uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
        id: branch-deploy
        with:
          trigger: ".deploy"

      # Run your deployment logic for your project here - examples seen below

      # Checkout your projects repository based on the ref provided by the branch-deploy step
      - uses: actions/checkout@3.0.2
        with:
          ref: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.ref }}

      # Do some fake "noop" deployment logic here
      # conditionally run a noop deployment
      - name: fake noop deploy
        if: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' && steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop == 'true' }}
        run: echo "I am doing a fake noop deploy"

      # Do some fake "regular" deployment logic here
      # conditionally run a regular deployment
      - name: fake regular deploy
        if: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' && steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop != 'true' }}
        run: echo "I am doing a fake regular deploy"

Keep reading to learn more about this Action! Even further details about how this Action works can be found below as well

About 💡

Before we get into details, let's first define a few key terms below:

IssueOps - Its like ChatOps but instead of using a chat bot, commands are invoked by commenting on a pull request (PRs are issues under the hood) - Example: commenting .deploy on a pull request
Branch Deployment - A branch deploy is a deployment methodology that enables you to deploy a branch (or pull request) to a desired environment before merging to main or master - More on this below
PR - Short for pull request

IssueOps 🗨️

The best way to define IssueOps is to compare it to something similar, ChatOps. You may be familiar with the concept ChatOps already but in case you aren't here is a quick definition below:

ChatOps is the process of interacting with a chat bot to execute commands directly in a chat platform. For example, with ChatOps you might do something like .ping example.org to check the status of a website

IssueOps adopts the same mindset but through a different medium. Rather than using a chat service to invoke the commands we use comments on a GitHub Issue or Pull Request. GitHub Actions is the runtime which executes our desired logic

Branch Deployments 🌲

Branch deployments are a battle tested way of deploying your changes to a given environment for a variety of reasons. Branch deployments allow you to do the following:

Deploy your changes to production before merging
Deploy changes to a staging, QA, or non-production environment

Branch Deployment Core Concepts ⭐

Note: The main branch is considered the base repository branch for all examples below

The main branch is always considered to be a stable and deployable branch
All changes are deployed to production before they are merged to the main branch
To roll back a branch deployment, you deploy the main branch
noop deployments should not make changes but rather report what they "would" have done

Why use branch deployments?

To put the merge -> deploy model in the past!

What if your changes are bad and you broke production with the merge -> deploy model? Well now you have to revert your PR, get passing CI/builds, and then re-merge your changes to get back to a stable environment. With the branch deploy model, this is almost never the case. The main branch is considered to be always safe and stable

How does it work? 📚

This section will go into detail about how this Action works and hopefully inspire you on ways you can leverage it in your own projects

Let's walk through a GitHub Action workflow using this Action line by line:

# The name of the workflow, it can be anything you wish
name: "branch deploy demo"

# The workflow to execute on is comments that are newly created
on:
  issue_comment:
    types: [created]

It is important to note that the workflow we want to run IssueOps on is issue_comment and created. This means we will not run under any other contexts for this workflow. You can edit this as you wish but it does change how this model ultimately works. For example, issue_comment workflows only use files found on main to run. If you do something like on: pull_request you could open yourself up to issues as a user could alter a file in a PR and exfil your secrets for example. Only using issue_comment is the suggested workflow type

# Permissions needed for reacting and adding comments for IssueOps commands
permissions:
  pull-requests: write # Required for commenting on PRs
  deployments: write # Required for updating deployment statuses
  contents: write # Required for reading/writing the lock file

These are the minimum permissions you need to run this Action

jobs:
  demo:
    if: ${{ github.event.issue.pull_request }} # only run on pull request comments
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # Checkout your projects repository
      - uses: actions/checkout@3.0.2

Sets up your demo job, uses an ubuntu runner, and checks out your repo - Just some standard setup for a general Action. We also add an if: statement here to only run this workflow on pull request comments to make it a little cleaner

Note: The Action will check the context for us anyways but this can save us a bit of CI time by using the if: condition

      # Execute IssueOps branch deployment logic, hooray!
      - uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
        id: branch-deploy
        with:
          trigger: ".deploy"

Note: It is important to set an id: for this job so we can reference its outputs in subsequent steps

The core of this Action takes place here. This block of code will trigger the branch deploy action to run. It will do the following:

Check the comment which invoked the workflow for the trigger: phrase (.deploy) defined here
If the trigger phrase is found, it will proceed with a deployment
It will start by reacting to your message to let you know it is running
The Action will post a comment with a link to the running Actions workflow for you to follow its progress
A deployment will be started and attached to your pull request - You'll get a nice little yellow rocket which tells you a deployment is in progress
Outputs will be exported by this job for later reference in other jobs as well

      # Do some fake "noop" deployment logic here
      # conditionally run a noop deployment
      - name: fake noop deploy
        if: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' && steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop == 'true' }}
        run: echo "I am doing a fake noop deploy"

      # Do some fake "regular" deployment logic here
      # conditionally run a regular deployment
      - name: fake regular deploy
        if: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' && steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop != 'true' }}
        run: echo "I am doing a fake regular deploy"

As seen above, we have two steps. One for a noop deploy, and one for a regular deploy. For example, the noop deploy could trigger a terraform plan and the regular deploy could be a terraform apply. These steps are conditionally gated by two variables:

steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' - The continue variable is only set to true when a deployment should continue
steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop == 'true' - The noop variable is only set to true when a noop deployment should be run

Example: You comment .deploy noop on a pull request. A noop deployment is detected so this action outputs the noop variable to true. You also have the correct permissions to execute the IssueOps command so the action also outputs the continue variable to true. This will allow the "fake noop deploy" step seen above to run and the "fake regular deploy" step will be skipped

Inputs 📥

Input	Required?	Default	Description
environment	yes	production	The name of the environment to deploy to. Example, "production"
github_token	yes	${{ github.token }}	The GitHub token used to create an authenticated client - Provided for you by default!
status	yes	${{ job.status }}	The status of the GitHub Actions - For use in the post run workflow - Provided for you by default!
reaction	no	eyes	If set, the specified emoji "reaction" is put on the comment to indicate that the trigger was detected. For example, "rocket" or "eyes"
trigger	no	.deploy	The string to look for in comments as an IssueOps trigger. Example: ".deploy"
noop_trigger	no	noop	The string to look for in comments as an IssueOps noop trigger. Example: "noop" - The usage would then be ".deploy noop"
lock_trigger	no	.lock	The string to look for in comments as an IssueOps lock trigger. Used for locking branch deployments on a specific branch. Example: "lock"
unlock_trigger	no	.unlock	The string to look for in comments as an IssueOps unlock trigger. Used for unlocking branch deployments. Example: "unlock"
lock_info_alias	no	.wcid	An alias or shortcut to get details about the current lock (if it exists) Example: ".info" - Hubbers will find the ".wcid" default helpful ("where can I deploy")
environment	no	production	The name of the default environment to deploy to. Example, "production"
environment_targets	no	production,development,staging	Optional target environments to select for use with deployments. Example, "production,development,staging"
stable_branch	no	main	The name of a stable branch to deploy to (rollbacks). Example: "main"
prefix_only	no	true	If "false", the trigger can match anywhere in the comment
update_branch	no	warn	Determine how you want this Action to handle "out-of-date" branches. Available options: "disabled", "warn", "force". "disabled" means that the Action will not care if a branch is out-of-date. "warn" means that the Action will warn the user that a branch is out-of-date and exit without deploying. "force" means that the Action will force update the branch. Note: The "force" option is not recommended due to Actions not being able to re-run CI on commits originating from Actions itself
required_contexts	no	false	Manually enforce commit status checks before a deployment can continue. Only use this option if you wish to manually override the settings you have configured for your branch protection settings for your GitHub repository. Default is "false" - Example value: "context1,context2,context3" - In most cases you will not need to touch this option
allow_forks	no	true	Allow branch deployments to run on repository forks. If you want to harden your workflows, this option can be set to false. Default is "true"
admins	no	false	A comma seperated list of GitHub usernames or teams that should be considered admins by this Action. Admins can deploy pull requests without the need for branch protection approvals. Example: "monalisa,octocat,my-org/my-team"
admins_pat	no	false	A GitHub personal access token with "read:org" scopes. This is only needed if you are using the "admins" option with a GitHub org team. For example: "my-org/my-team"

Outputs 📤

Output	Description
triggered	The string "true" if the trigger was found, otherwise the string "false"
comment_body	The comment body
environment	The environment that has been selected for a deployment
noop	The string "true" if the noop trigger was found, otherwise the string "false" - Use this to conditionally control whether your deployment runs as a noop or not
ref	The ref (branch or sha) to use with deployment
comment_id	The comment id which triggered this deployment
type	The type of trigger that was detected (examples: deploy, lock, unlock)
continue	The string "true" if the deployment should continue, otherwise empty - Use this to conditionally control if your deployment should proceed or not
fork	The string "true" if the pull request is a fork, otherwise "false"
fork_ref	The true ref of the fork
fork_label	The API label field returned for the fork
fork_checkout	The console command presented in the GitHub UI to checkout a given fork locally
fork_full_name	The full name of the fork in "org/repo" format

Custom Deployment Messages ✏️

This is useful to display to the user the status of your deployment. For example, you could display the results of a terraform apply in the deployment comment

You can use the GitHub Actions environment to export custom deployment messages from your workflow to be referenced in the post run workflow for the branch-deploy Action that comments results back to your PR

Simply set the environment variable DEPLOY_MESSAGE to the message you want to be displayed in the post run workflow

Bash Example:

echo "DEPLOY_MESSAGE=<message>" >> $GITHUB_ENV

Actions Workflow Example:

# Do some fake "noop" deployment logic here
- name: fake noop deploy
  if: ${{ steps.branch-deploy.outputs.continue == 'true' && steps.branch-deploy.outputs.noop == 'true' }}
  run: |
    echo "DEPLOY_MESSAGE=I would have **updated** 1 server" >> $GITHUB_ENV
    echo "I am doing a fake noop deploy"

Additional Custom Message Examples 📚

Adding newlines to your message

echo "DEPLOY_MESSAGE=NOOP Result:\nI would have **updated** 1 server" >> $GITHUB_ENV

Multi-line strings (reference)

echo 'DEPLOY_MESSAGE<<EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "$SOME_MULTI_LINE_STRING_HERE" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo 'EOF' >> $GITHUB_ENV

Where $SOME_MULTI_LINE_STRING_HERE is a bash variable containing a multi-line string

Adding a code block to your message

echo "DEPLOY_MESSAGE=\`\`\`yaml\nname: value\n\`\`\`" >> $GITHUB_ENV

How does this work? 🤔

To add custom messages to our final deployment message we need to use the GitHub Actions environment. This is so that we can dynamically pass data into the post action workflow that leaves a comment on our PR. The post action workflow will look to see if this environment variable is set (DEPLOY_MESSAGE). If the variable is set, it adds to to the PR comment. Otherwise, it will use a simple comment body that doesn't include the custom message.

About Environments 🌎

If you are using environment rather than repo secrets, this section will be of interest to you

For those familiar with GitHub Actions, you have probably used environments before to store secrets and trigger deployments. The syntax for doing so is very simple and usually looks like this:

jobs:
  deploy:
    environment: production # right here we use an environment
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: deployment
        run: terraform apply -auto-approve

However, this has a few limitations:

When workflows finish, so does the deployment to that environment - This means that the little green rocket doesn't "stick" to your pull request
It is tricky to tune in environment protection rules with a single environment when using IssueOps + branch-deployments

To get around these limitations with this branch-deploy action and IssueOps, we can use two different environments. One to store our environement secrets and another to use in our branch deployments.

Yes this isn't the most elegant solution, but it works and is very easy to accomplish

Here is a proper example for using two environments with this action:

jobs:
  deploy:
    if: ${{ github.event.issue.pull_request }} # only run on pull request comments
    environment: production-secrets # custom environment for storing secrets
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
        id: branch-deploy
        with:
          trigger: ".deploy"
          environment: production # the environment for the actual deployment

      # Your deployment steps go here...

This allows you to achieve the following:

Fine grained control over your environment secrets in the production-secrets environment
A "sticky" green rocket to your PR that doesn't disappear when the workflow finishes
Access to all the environment secrets stored in the production-secrets environment

Environment Targets

With this Action, you can also choose the environment you wish to deploy to. This is useful if you have multiple environments and want to deploy to a specific environment.

This can be achieved with the environment_targets input

With this option, you can specify a comma separated list of environments that you can deploy to besides just the default with .deploy

The defaults that are used are: production,development,staging. However, you can configure this to be whatever you like!

To use a deployment with a specific environment, you would invoke your commands like so:

.deploy production
.deploy to production
.deploy to <environment>

This also works with noop commands as well

.deploy noop production
.deploy noop to production
.deploy noop to <environment>

YAML input example:

- uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
  id: branch-deploy
  with:
    trigger: ".deploy"
    environment: production # the default environment
    environment_targets: "production,development,staging" # the environments that you can deploy to with explicit commands

Security 🔒

The IssueOps + branch-deploy model is significantly more secure than a traditional "deploy on merge" or "run on commit" model. Let's reference the workflow trigger that the branch-deploy model uses:

on:
  issue_comment:
    types: [created]

Unlike the on: pull_request trigger, the on: issue_comment trigger only uses Actions workflow files from the default branch in GitHub. This means that a bad actor cannot open a PR with a malicious workflow edit and dump secrets, trigger bad deployments, or cause other issues. This means that any changes to the workflow files can be protected with branch protection rules to ensure only verified changes make it into your default branch.

To further harden your workflow files, it is strongly suggested to include the base permissions that this Action needs to run:

permissions:
  pull-requests: write
  deployments: write
  contents: read

It should also be noted that this Action has built in functions to check the permissions of a user who invokes a IssueOps command. If the user does not have write or greater permissions to the repository, their command will be rejected

Admins 👩‍🔬

This Action supports a configurable input called admins which can be used to specify a list of individual GitHub users or teams that should have elevated permissions when using this Action

The admins input option takes a comma seperated list of GitHub handles or GitHub org teams which can bypass branch protection rules related to approvals for deployments. For example, if you give the option admins: monalisa, the monalisa user will be able to deploy without needing approval on their pull requests. CI checks will still need to pass however.

It should be noted that if you do not have pull request approvals enabled in your branch protection rules, then this option will not make a difference either way

Here is a simple example using only handles below (the monalisa and octocat users will be treated as admins):

- uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
  id: branch-deploy
  with:
    admins: monalisa,octocat

Here is an example using a mix of GitHub handles and a GitHub org team below:

- uses: github/branch-deploy@vX.X.X
  id: branch-deploy
  with:
    admins: monalisa,octocat,octo-awesome-org/octo-awesome-team
    admins_pat: ${{ secrets.BRANCH_DEPLOY_ADMINS_PAT }}

In this case, all users (and future users) in the octo-awesome-org/octo-awesome-team team will be treated as admins in addition to the monalisa and octocat users

It should be noted if you choose to use GitHub org teams for admin definitions, you will need a GitHub Personal Access Token with the read:org scope. This is because the Action will need to make API calls on behalf of an authenticated user in the org to retrieve team memberships. If you choose to only use GitHub handles for admin definitions, then the admins_pat input is not required

Note: You can read more about the admin option under the inputs section in this readme

Actions Stability 🔧

In order to ensure your usage of this action is stable, it is highly recommended that you use either pin your action to a SHA or use a specific release tag

Actions Tag Pinning

You can easily select the exact version you want on the GitHub Actions marketplace seen in the screenshot below:

Actions SHA Pinning

You can also pin to an exact commit SHA as well using a third party tool such as mheap/pin-github-action

GitHub Actions security hardening and stability docs availabe here: docs

Deployment Locks and Actions Concurrency 🔓

Only run one deployment at a time

There are multiple ways to leverage this action for deployment locks! Let's take a look at each option

Deployment Locks

The suggested way to go about deployment locking is to use the built in locking feature in this Action!

Just like how you can comment .deploy on a pull request to trigger a deployment, you can also comment .lock to lock deployments. This will prevent other users from triggering a deployment. The lock is associated with your GitHub handle, so you will be able to deploy any pull request in the repository and as many times as you want. Any other user who attempts a deployment while your lock is active will get a comment on their PR telling them that a lock is in effect

To release the deployment lock, simply comment .unlock on any pull request in the repository at anytime. Please be aware that other users can run this same command to remove the lock (in case you get offline and forget to do so 😉)

These deployment locks come in two flavors:

sticky
non-sticky

sticky locks are locks that presist until you remove them. As seen in the example above, the .lock command creates a sticky lock that will persist until someone runs .unlock

non-sticky locks are temporary locks that only exist during a deployment. This action will automatically create a non-sticky lock for you when you run .deploy. It does this to prevent another user from running .deploy in another pull request and creating a deployment conflict

Deployment Lock Core Concepts

Let's review the core concepts of deployment locks in a short summary:

Deployment locks are used to prevent multiple deployments from running at the same time and breaking things
Non-sticky locks are created automatically when running .deploy or .deploy noop
Sticky locks are created manually by commenting .lock on a pull request - They will presist until you remove them with .unlock
Locks are associated to a user's GitHub handle - This user can deploy any pull request in the repository and as many times as they want
Any user can remove a lock by commenting .unlock on any pull request in the repository
Details about a lock can be viewed with .lock --details
Like all the features of this Action, users need write permissions or higher to use a command

How do Deployment Locks Work?

This Action uses GitHub branches to create a deployment lock. When you run .lock the following happens:

The Action checks to see if a lock already exists
If a lock does not exists it begins to create one for you
The Action creates a new branch called branch-deploy-lock
The Action then creates a lock file called lock.json on the new branch
The lock.json file contains metadata about the lock

Now when new deployments are run, they will check if a lock exists. If it does and it doesn't belong to you, your deployment is rejected. If the lock does belong to you, the deployment will continue.

Deployment Lock Examples 📸

Here are a few examples of deployment locks in action!

Lock Example:

Unlock Example:

Actions Concurrency

Note: Using the locking mechanism included in this Action (above) is highly recommended over Actions concurreny. The section below will be included anyways should you have a valid reason to use it instead of the deploy lock features this Action provides

If your workflows need some level of concurrency or locking, you can leverage the native GitHub Actions concurrency feature (documentation) to enable this.

For example, if you have two users run .deploy on two seperate PRs at the same time, it will trigger two deployments. In some cases, this will break things and you may not want this. By using Actions concurrency, you can prevent multiple workflows from running at once

The default behavior for Actions is to run the first job that was triggered and to set the other one as pending. If you want to cancel the other job, that can be configured as well. Below you will see an example where we setup a concurrency group which only allows one deployment at a time and cancels all other workflows triggered while our deployment is running:

concurrency: 
  group: production
  cancel-in-progress: true

Live Examples 📸

What to see live examples of this Action in use?

Check out some of the links below to see how others are using this Action in their projects:

Suggestions 🌟

This section will cover a few suggestions that will help you when using this Action

Suggest Updating Pull Request Branches - You should absolutely use this option when using the branch-deploy Action. This option can be found in your repository's /settings page
Enable Branch Protection Settings - It is always a good idea to enable branch protection settings for your repo, especially when using this Action

Testing Locally 🔨

Steps for testing the Action locally for development

Using NPM

npm run test

Note: This has been tested on node 16.x and npm 8.x

Using Act

This is a not fully supported

Test with act locally to simulate a GitHub Actions event

act issue_comment -e events/issue_comment_deploy.json -s GITHUB_TOKEN=faketoken -j test

Contributing 💻

All contributions are welcome from all!

Check out the contributing guide to learn more

License

ecogit-stage/branch-deploy

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