Envoyer (Laracasts course)

01 - The First Deployment

• Current deployment in current subdirectory
• Keeps last 6-7 releases in releases directory
• current is a symlink to the latest release
• Web root should be set to current/public

02 - Server Directory Structure

• Deployment steps behind the scene:
  1. Create new directory named after the current date and time under releases
  2. Install dependencies
  3. Run deployment hooks, such as running migrations
  4. Switch symlink of current to the new directory
• storage is a symlink too

03 - Health Checks and Rollbacks

• Healthcheck can of course only be run after activating a new release, making it available to the public
• We can manually redeploy old versions by clicking a button in the interface

04 - Deployment Hooks

• Available hooks - before and after:
  • Clone New Release
  • Install Composer Dependencies
  • Activate New Release
  • Purge Old Releases
• Can select which server(s) to run on (e.g. migrations should not be run on multiple servers)
• Variables which will be replaced in hook scripts (remove the additional spaces between the brackets) include:
  • { { release } } ⇒ current release directory

05 - When Deployment Scripts Break

• Deployment gets canceled, a warning icon appears on the dashboard

06 - Multi-Server Deployment

• Each deployment step (e.g. the built-in or hooks) has to complete successfully on all servers, before Envoyer begins the next.
• Remember to modify hooks so they run on all servers where they are required (e.g. migrations should not be run on multiple servers)

07 - Notifications

• Notifications can be sent to:
  • Slack
  • Email
  • Discord
  • Microsoft Teams
• Whenever:
  • Deployment completes (whether successfully or not)
  • Post-deployment healthcheck fails
  • Heartbeat fails

08 - Heartbeats

• Notifies when a scheduled task (cron job) has not run when expected.
• When using a regular cron job (i.e. configured in some user’s crontab), append && curl https://beats.envoyer.io/heartbeat/XXX to the command to ping Envoyer. && makes the curl command run only if the previous command(s) exited with code 0 (i.e. successfully).
• When using Laravel, we can use the thenPing() method to request the heartbeat URL.

Alternatives

• thenping.me

09 - Environment Management

• The “Manage environment” button allows to deploy an .env file across all servers.
• The contents are stored in the Envoyer service, but are encrypted with a key that they do not store (so it has to be entered for each modification of the .env contents).
• It is put in the project root on the server, and symlinked to from each new release folder.

10 - Collaborators

• Collaborators have to sign up for Envoyer before they can be invited, but they do not have to pay for the service.
• Collaborators are invited per project, using the email address they registered with.
• Invitations have to be accepted by the collaborator.
• Collaborators can deploy, modify settings, add deployment hooks and heartbeats, but cannot add additional collaborators nor delete the project.