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Creating deploy inference rules
Creating deploy inference rules
Updated over 3 months ago

Deploy inference rules allow you to register deployments in DX based on jobs that run in your CI/CD jobs. Inference rules are a no-code solution for simple deployment workflows, whereas the Deployments API is a more flexible solution that can handle a wide range of deployment mechanisms.

Setup instructions

Deployment inference is configured by creating inference rules in the DX user interface. To set up a rule, specify the following parameters:

  1. Pipeline Source: Select from Github Actions, GitLab, CircleCI, and other options based on connections you have configured in DX.

  2. CI/CD Level:

    • GitHub Actions & CircleCI: Automatically set to "Workflow".

    • Buildkite: Automatically set to "Pipeline."

    • GitLab & Azure DevOps: Option to select either "Pipeline" or "Stage".

  3. Repository: Select one from the dropdown, or input a regular expression.

  4. Integration branch (optional): Set this value if you are using a branch to integrate changes before merging to a release branch.

  5. Workflow: Select the specific workflow, pipeline, or stage for which you want a deployment to be generated from the dropdown. Regular expressions are

  6. Target branch: The Git branch for which you want to infer deployments from, e.g. main, master, or development.

  7. Service: The name of service being deployed.

Understanding CI/CD Hierarchies

The second field for an inference rule is the CI/CD level. Following are the CI/CD hierarchies for each provider, with DX-imported levels in bold:

  • GitHub: Repository > Workflow > Job > Step

  • CircleCI: Project > Pipeline > Workflow > Job > Step

  • GitLab: Project > Pipeline > Stage > Job

  • Azure DevOps (ADO): Project > Repository > Pipeline > Stage > Job > Step

  • Buildkite: Pipeline > Step > Job

Examples

Inference rule examples:

  1. When the GitHub workflow named "Deploy" runs on the "main" branch, infer a deployment to the "production" environment.

  2. When the same workflow runs on the "staging" branch, infer a deployment to the "staging" environment.

Testing

After creating an inference rule, trigger the pipeline/workflow/stage to run on the relevant branch, then verify a deployment got added with the deployment_inference_rule_id corresponding to the rule.

Backfilling

Once your rules are setup and verified, you may wish to have deployments backfilled based historical data. Please contact DX support to request that a one-time backfill be performed.

Regular Expressions

DX lets you use regular expressions to create rules for multiple repositories and/or workflows at once. Below are a few common examples:

  • To create a rule for all repos, use the expression (.*)

  • To create a rule for all repos that begin with the term "mobile-", use the expression (^mobile-.*)

  • To create a rule for all jobs that include the term "deploy", use the expression (.*deploy.*)

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