Using Octopus v2019.6.6
This “issue” has been around for numerous versions.
Go to a project that has
a. A lifecycle where phase 1 has automatically deployment on.
Click on “CREATE RELEASE”
Click on “SAVE”
Observe that there are several buttons to click on “DEPLOY TO …” (where you can change deployment time settings like step exclusion) and DON’T click any of that buttons.
Now on the left side click “Overview” and see that the release is automatically deployed.
Now the above this makes sense when we do an automatic release from Azure DevOps.
But when I am manually creating a release I don’t expect it to be automatically released. Because I want to PICK the environment first.
Is it possible to ignore the automatic deployment phase when manually creating a release?
Thanks for getting in touch! I think there is a fairly simple solution to the issue you are hitting here. The solution would be to disable the automatic deployment feature for the Lifecycle and to add a Deploy Release step to your Azure DevOps pipeline.
This will let you automatically deploy the release as a part of your builds from DevOps and ensure you don’t hit this issue when manually creating releases in the Octopus UI.
Thanks for getting back. I’m not too sure what you mean regarding this being a feature request. The automatic deployment feature is a part of the Lifecycle phases. This feature can be enabled or disabled on a per-phase basis in your Lifecycle. (We briefly discuss this feature in our Lifecycles documentation)
I may be misinterpreting your response here. If you are after some extended functionality on our automatic deployment feature, would you be able to provide some further details about what you would like to see?
Potential scenario:
We have a project with an automatic deployment phase.
I want to create a new release because some variables have changed and/or I want to deploy to a new machine. (I know about Update Variables).
Now I MANUALLY create a new release and click save. I don’t expect it to be automatically be deployed. I want to change some settings (eg. exclude some steps, exclude machines or time to deploy). And then press the deploy button. So it results in two releases. That’s not the intend!
So my feature request is to not automatically deploy if we manually create the release.
Thanks for getting back. Unfortunately this feature is sort of all or nothing. The feature is essentially a trigger for the release entering the phase of the environment. If this feature is enabled it will always automatically deploy, there is no way to disable this feature for manual deployments only.
The best way to get around this as I mentioned would be to simply disable to feature. We created this feature at the very early beginnings of Octopus, however the most common way to manage this now days is by using the Octopus deploy-release step on your build server.
This will still let you automatically deploy when you run your builds from the Azure DevOps. It invokes Octo.exe create-release for you and removes the need to use this feature in your Lifecycles in Octopus.
Let me know if this helps, or if you still have some questions here.
I am aware that this is currently the way that this works. So when you say this feature is all or nothing, you mean that is because it’s currently build this way. I am suggesting a process change that would give the user more control in this scenario. That would imply changes to the code base of Octopus.
My apologies, I don’t think I was quite getting that you were requesting new functionality here and not just unsure how the feature worked. To clarify, we do not currently have any plans to change this feature in the way you suggest.
Saying that, if you would like to see this sort of change, the best suggestion I can make is to create a UserVoice Suggestion. We use UserVoice to gauge community support for new ideas and feature. If a suggestions gathers enough support, we can look into its implementation into Octopus.
Let me know if you have any further questions here. And sorry again for any confusion above.
