I’ve had initially set up project on Octopus 3.2.1 with Automatic Release Creation, but noticed that this mechanism does not create a releases in some cases. We’re using specified (fixed) package ids and versions. We ended up building slightly modified environment-specific packages for different environments. We are not planning to use release promotion, instead our pipeline is using rebuild process.
So, let’s say we have 12.0-Test521 and 12.0-Dev2745 releases and packages already in Octopus.
If I push 12.0-Test522 package, a release would be created fine. The same would hold for 12.0-Test123. However, if I push 12.0-Dev2746, Automatic Release Creation does not create a release.
I ended up abandoning Automatic Release Creation and using >octo create-release, which is an extra build step.
We meet again ARC mostly was added to help users outside of systems such as Team City where you can add your own build steps.
When and why we should trigger releases to be created becomes complicated when you have to think of many scenarios for an expansive range of customers and their uses.
We tried to come up with a rules that would be generic enough, but never considered it as a complete replacement for our create-release command for scenarios like yours.
It does sound like your usage is very unique with no using a direct pipeline, I would assume channels are useful for you for these reasons.
We had many discussions about adding ARC specific to channels, but there were too many cases of channels being setup where a package would trigger more than 1 release due to being matched in multiple channels so this was put on the back burner until we can find an all round solution.
There will always be cases specifically that do not fit into the way Octopus is designed and built, but we feel that is why we have things like the create-release commands in Octo.exe and why we build API first, so you can customize what you need to get the best out of automating with Octopus.
We have a UserVoice suggestion site to allow customers to voice suggestions and ideas for areas they think are missing in Octopus or could be expanded. If you think there is an area that could be improved and would be valuable to the community please add it so we can determine where to spend our efforts on https://octopusdeploy.uservoice.com/
OK, thanks. Some sort of inline help explaining to new users how or when ARC works would be very helpful. When I saw it I read it as “a package always automatically creates a release”.
Our documentation is a bit lacking as there are quite a few rules and scenarios where it will not work, so I’ve put in a task to have it updated and provide much better troubleshooting.
ARC mostly was added to help users outside of systems such as Team City where you can add your own build steps.