Deploying

There are three ways to start a deploy. They all produce the same thing: a new immutable copy of the site, made live.

From a folder on your machine#

shipzy deploy ./my-app --project my-app

shipzy installs dependencies, builds, uploads the output and makes it live.

• --project defaults to the name in package.json. Names use lowercase letters, digits and dashes.
• --skip-build uploads an existing dist/, build/ or out/ folder as it is.
• --install-command and --build-command replace the detected steps, for example --install-command "npm ci --legacy-peer-deps".
• --keep 20 keeps more history than the default 10. Live deploys are always kept.

shipzy detects the package manager from the lockfile (pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock or package-lock.json) and runs <package manager> run build.

What is supported#

The project needs a react dependency and a build script, and routes must work from the site root. A Vite base or a CRA homepage pointing at a sub-path will break asset loading.

In your AWS account (--remote)#

shipzy deploy ./my-app --project my-app --remote            # build in AWS and watch the log
shipzy deploy ./my-app --project my-app --remote --detach   # start it and come back later
shipzy builds -p my-app                                     # recent builds and their status
shipzy logs <build> -f                                      # follow a running build

The build runs in CodeBuild in your account, using the project's stored environment variables. It spends about 1.5 minutes starting up, so a local deploy is the fast choice while you iterate. Press Ctrl-C to stop watching; the build keeps running.

Remote deploys never upload node_modules, dist, build, .git or any .env* file.

From GitHub#

Deploy a repository once#

shipzy deploy --repo owner/name
shipzy deploy --repo https://github.com/owner/name --branch main

The build runs in your account. A public repository needs no token.

Deploy on every push#

Connect the repository once per project:

1. Create a fine-grained personal access token limited to the repository, with Contents: Read-only and Webhooks: Read and write.

2. Connect it:

   shcopy

   shipzy github connect -p my-app --repo owner/name
   

   Paste the token when asked (the input is hidden), or set GITHUB_TOKEN. The token is checked against the repository and stored in your account's Secrets Manager, and the webhook is registered on the repository.

From then on, every push to the connected branch builds and deploys. You can also build the current head without pushing:

shipzy github deploy -p my-app

Useful options for github connect: --branch, --host, --install-command, --build-command, --previews (see Previews) and --reuse-token (use the token already stored). Several projects can follow one repository, each on its own branch or host. To stop: shipzy github disconnect -p my-app.

Where the site is served#

• A project's own address. The first deploy of a project with no domain creates a small CloudFront distribution and gives it an address like d1a2b3c4d5e6f7.cloudfront.net. Every later deploy of that project updates the same address, and other projects have theirs, so any number of sites can be live at once.
• A custom domain. Once you add one, deploys update it (and the project's own address).
• --host. Serve on a specific hostname that already points at your stack.

A first deploy takes about five minutes longer while CloudFront creates the address. After that, deploys are as fast as the build.

Retention#

shipzy keeps the newest 10 deploys of each project, plus any that are live, and removes older ones automatically. See Rollback and cleanup.