Integration to CI

CI pipelines today lint, test, build and then deploy applications.

Let's explore the deploy step so we know what it takes to deploy to a gitops environment.

Steps to deploy in a gitops environment

CI takes the application manifest templates (Helm, Kustomize)
Sets the release specific values, like the tag of the docker image to be deployed
Sets the environment values, like the urls, environment variables and alike
Optionally, it renders the application manifest templates
CI clones the gitops repository
CI commits the updated (rendered) deployment manifests to a local working copy of the gitops repository
CI pushes the gitops commits

Besides the happy path, CI pipelines take care of

concurrent write issues when multiple applications are being deployed at the same time
special workflow steps like rollbacks
gitops repo clone/write speed optimizations

in every application repository you have.

Gimlet assumes those tasks and you can use Gimlet as a deploy API.

Using Gimlet as a deploy API

Gimlet assumes the gitops deployment tasks from your CI pipeline and runs them in a centralized service. CI pipelines can call the Gimlet API to deploy.

Practically they look like this Github Action:

- name: 🚀 Deploy / Staging
  uses: gimlet-io/gimlet-artifact-shipper-action@v0.8.0
  with:
    DEPLOY: "true"
    ENV: "staging"
    APP: "gais"
  env:
    GIMLET_SERVER: ${{ secrets.GIMLET_SERVER }}
    GIMLET_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GIMLET_TOKEN }}

You can keep organizing your CI workflows as you desire, and call Gimlet's API whenever you need to perform a gitops operation.

With Gimlet's centralized approach you gain

standardization by design
better control on gitops write operations (halt them, or update them at once)
a better gitops deploy history
ready-made common gitops workflows, like rollbacks
optimizations on gitops read/write speed and failure scenarios