How to execute continuous deployment

Steps are an easy way to execute actions on deployment without having to implement scripts to handle common deployment tasks and scenarios.

Steps are the execution of step templates, of which there are three types:

Built-in

Steps provided by Octopus are out-of-the-box and ready to use.

Community

Publically available step templates created and updated by Octopus Community. The code is licensed as open-source under an Apache license and can be found on the Octopus GitHub repository

Custom

Define your own steps based on either built-in or installed community step templates to encapsulate common tasks in your organization.

You can browse online all community step templates at the Octopus Deploy Library.

If community steps have external dependencies (for example, the scripts call some tool or SDK), you have to make sure that they exist where the step executes (server or tentacles). This can be automated by keeping the tools in a package and using Octopus for provisioning, or doing automatic provisioning with a script step.

All step types are treated equally by Octopus when you add a step to your process, and all installed step templates are visible, but Octopus tells you from where they have come. They are either written by Octopus [1] or installed [2] (either custom or community):

Learn how to create custom step templates.

Installing community step templates

From the Process Editor

When you add a step, you are presented with a list of steps in two different groups:

• Installed step templates
• Community-contributed step templates

If you hover on a step template [1] from the Community-contributed step templates [2],

a pop-up appears, and if you confirm it, the step template is downloaded, installed, and ready to be configured right on the process editor.

From the Library

All installed Step Templates are managed on the Step Templates> tab from the >Library> menu:

From there, you can import or add custom step templates or install community step template(s).

Updating Step Templates

Step templates are versioned. When you add a step to your process, it is bound to that specific version.

If a step template changes, the process still executes the version to which the step is bound. If you edit the process, that is visible on step properties. It is possible to update to the latest version of the step template right from the editor.

When a step template is updated, a counter is visible on the usage tab, and it shows the number of projects that are running an outdated version of the step.

You can choose to update a project individually or update all of them.

It is possible that processes cannot be updated automatically. It depends on the differences between the version that the process is using and the version to which it is being updated. If there are conflicts, you are prompted to resolve them manually.

To learn more about Continuous Integration implementation, check out the full online course, below.