We’ve been using Octopus Deploy successfully for a few years, and a recurring issue has come up again.
When we make some changes to our deployment process, we’d typically want to test these changes with a deployment to our first lifecycle environment ‘Internal Test’.
Occasionally, the new changes don’t work first time, so we refine our steps, and re-release until our process steps are correct.
In doing so, we clutter up our ‘Overview’ page with many releases to ‘Internal Test’, but no promotions to ‘External Test’ or ‘Live’.
My question is - how can we ‘test out’ new changes to our deployment process steps without cluttering up the ‘Overview’ page.
Thanks for getting in touch! The only way to remove a release from being deployed from the Overview page is to delete that release. You can delete these releases individually by going into [Project] > Releases, selecting a release, then Edit (in the overflow menu) > Delete (in the next overflow menu). I’ve attached a gif showing this process as it’s easier to visualize.
If you need to delete a range of releases, the easier way to do this in bulk is to use Octo.exe delete-releases command and the --minversion=VALUE and --maxversion=VALUE options. You can refer to this command in the following doc page.
I hope this helps! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions going forward.
Sorry, I don’t think I was clear in my original post.
I don’t just want to create some Releases, and then possibly delete them to keep the Overview tidy.
I need to create a Release and then actually try the Release (e.g. to check out things like transforms working correctly). Sometimes it’s a bit trial-and-error, so the Overview gets cluttered up.
Is there anything else in the overall Octopus functionality that would help, e.g. deploying to a entirely separate ‘tryout’ environment but using the same Process steps?
Thanks for following up! I get what you mean - having to delete your test releases could be tedious. Maybe a potential alternative would be to clone your existing project when it’s working as you need. This will clone your project’s deployment process and all of its variables/settings, etc. but not its releases. You can clone a project in your project’s Settings tab by clicking the overflow menu as shown in the following screenshot.
