Best practices for merging and deployments

The purpose of this note is to provide best practices when merging and deploying changes for the engineering-astro repository.

Validate each change before additional merges

Upon merging a pull request, the repository’s publish.yaml workflow will automatically build and deploy the updated Astro site to engineering.linkorb.com.

The build and deploy actions can be reviewed while underway or after completion at the repository’s actions page.

After successful completion, the changes can also be validated on the site itself.

The primary benefit of validating each change before executing another merge is that in the event of a failed build or deployment, the single change can be reverted.

Reverting a merge

In the event of a failed build or deployment, a merge can be reverted by:

1. Locate the offending pull request
2. Clicking Revert will create a new pull request removing the previously merged commits. The GitHub docs provide further details on this step.
3. In the description of the newly created pull request add a link to the failed action
4. Merge the newly created pull request

As with any merge, the build and deploy actions will be automatically triggered.