Deployments from CI

A deployment tells Watchtower which release is live in which environment. It becomes a chart annotation, the "new in this release" view, and (with the GitHub or GitLab connector) a comment on each pull request of the release.

Record it from CI with wtctl release create --deploy. It creates the release (idempotent by version), uploads the commits and the files they touched, and records the deployment. Use an API key with the ManageProject role in WT_API_KEY, and run it after the deploy step succeeds.

If you also installed the GitHub or GitLab connector and let the platform report deployments (deployment_status or Deployment events), do not call --deploy as well: that records the deployment twice. Either is fine on its own; keep wtctl release create (without --deploy) if you want commits before the deploy finishes.

GitHub Actions

name: deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with: { fetch-depth: 0 }
      - run: ./deploy.sh
      - name: Tell Watchtower
        env:
          WT_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.WT_API_KEY }}
        run: >
          wtctl release create "${GITHUB_SHA::12}"
          --api "${{ vars.WT_API_URL }}" --project "${{ vars.WT_PROJECT_ID }}"
          --commits auto --deploy production

GitLab CI

deploy:
  stage: deploy
  environment: production
  script:
    - ./deploy.sh
    - >
      wtctl release create "${CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA}"
      --api "$WT_API_URL" --project "$WT_PROJECT_ID"
      --commits auto --deploy production
  variables:
    GIT_DEPTH: 0

Set WT_API_KEY as a masked CI variable. The environment name must already exist in the project. Status: the snippets were checked against wtctl release create's flags, not run on a real runner.