Rolling back

In software, things go wrong sometimes. It is inevitable, so best if you can roll back routinely. That's why Gimlet provides rollback tooling out of the box.

On this page, you will learn how to use it, first with the CLI, then on the UI, and learn what it actually does.

On the command line

Getting a quick overview

To roll back, first you have to get a good picture of what was released and when.

List the recent releases with Gimlet CLI:

gimlet release list --env staging --app my-app

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@44e6c26866 (just now)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-34666da3-ae77-45d5-843b-7b4bce1edf55
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@c8d8c1d192 (1 week ago)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-c19a27dd-25a0-4d0b-b932-db4c7c660996
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@d2d0a416e6 (1 week ago)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-34666da3-ae77-45d5-843b-7b4bce1edf55
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

Roll back

Once you identified the broken release, roll back to the preceding one. Gimlet will revert all gitops commits made after the desired release.

gimlet release rollback --env staging --app my-app --to c8d8c1d192

And verify the release state:

gimlet release list --env staging --app my-app

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@44e6c26866 **ROLLED BACK** (1 minute ago)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-34666da3-ae77-45d5-843b-7b4bce1edf55
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@c8d8c1d192 (1 week ago)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-c19a27dd-25a0-4d0b-b932-db4c7c660996
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

staging/my-app laszlocph/gimletd-test@d2d0a416e6 (1 week ago)
        26fc62ff - Bugfix 123 Laszlo
        my-app/master my-app-34666da3-ae77-45d5-843b-7b4bce1edf55
        https://github.com/owner/repo/commits/0017d995e

On the dashboard

Each application has a release history bar with the ten most recent deploys. If you click the bar, you will see the individual released versions, and you can click the "Rollback to this version" button next to it.

What does rollback do

Rollbacks in Gimlet are preforming revert commits on all gitops commits that were made later than the release that you are rolling back to.

With this approach, you can be sure that a previous release will be applied verbatim on the cluster. No template rerenders, no waiting on the machinery.