Deployments and Pipelines

Applies to: FlexLab

Overview

A pipeline is FlexSite’s automated assembly line: each time developers push code to GitLab, jobs run to install dependencies, run tests, and deploy the built site to the correct environment.

Key concepts

  • CI/CD — *Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery*: automate building and releasing so humans do not FTP files manually.
  • Stage — a step in the pipeline (typical order: build → test → deploy).
  • Artifact — the packaged site the deploy stage pushes to FlexSite hosting.
  • Failed job — when a stage errors, the environment usually stays on the last successful deploy until you fix the code and push again.

Steps — watch a deploy

  1. Push commits to the branch linked to your target environment.
  2. Open Code in FlexSite or the Pipelines view in GitLab.
  3. Follow job logs if a stage turns red — error messages usually point to failed tests or Composer issues.
  4. On success, the environment Overview shows an updated deployment time.

What you see in FlexSite

  • Environment Overview summarizes the latest deploy and may link to GitLab logs.
  • A failed pipeline does not automatically roll forward broken code — the previous working version keeps serving traffic.

Customizing pipelines

  • Developers edit .gitlab-ci.yml in the repository to add tests, linters, or front-end builds.
  • Use FlexSite Automation for Drupal-specific steps *after* deploy (cache rebuild, config import) — see Post-Deployment Automation.

Build and runtime work may consume credits depending on Build Settings and plan limits.