Argo-cd: Preview environment

[gregdurham]

Hello,
First, want to say how neat Argo-cd is and how useful it has been.

I was wondering if anyone has or plans to build a preview environment feature on Argo-cd? This would be similar to a feature that Jenkins-x has that is really neat. I have thoughts on how it could work, but wondered if it made any sense.

Thanks!

[jessesuen]

@gregdurham preview environments can be done in argo-cd but would need be handled the pipeline. In fact, we have some internal users doing just this. The Jenkinsfile does something to the effect of:

if new PR  {
   argocd app create app-preview-<pr_number> \
      --repo <pr_repo> \
      --revision <pr_branch> \
      --path <path_in_app> \
      --dest-namespace <preview-namespace> \
      --dest-cluster <preview-cluster>
   argocd app create app-preview-<pr_number>
   argocd app sync app-preview-<pr_number>
} else if updated PR {
   argocd app sync app-preview-<pr_number> 
} else if closed PR {
   argocd app delete app-preview-<pr_number>
}

[alexmt]

@marcb1 has started working on https://github.com/marcb1/argocd-bot. The bot responds to argo diff command and renders expected changes in affected target clusters.

I think preview environment might be another bot feature. The user might send command e.g. argo preview and bot should run argocd app create app-preview-<pr_number>, send back preview app link and delete app when PR closed.

[alexec]

A wonderingment, could this be a standard feature for configured repos. E.g. Add something to the ConfigMap:

previews:
- repo: http://github.com/foo/bar
  namespace: preview
  foo: bar

And this would deploy all pull requests for that to an environment.

If that deployment passes or fail, then set the status to the PR:

https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-status-checks

Obviously, deleting when complete.

[alexec]

Resources

• https://github.com/jenkins-x/jx-docs/blob/master/content/developing/preview.md
• https://medium.com/@MichalFoksa/jenkins-x-preview-environment-3bf2424a05e4

[alexec]

@gregdurham - I've been working on this yesterday and I have today and maybe tomorrow morning to complete it. I'd like to get your input on various aspects. Are you free to chat today please?

[marcb1]

@alexec are there docs on how your feature works, I want to implement this functionality in my deployment bot, not sure how to leverage your changes. Are you simply relying on webhooks to auto deploy each PR?

[gregdurham]

Hey @Alexec sorry about the delay! Would love to chat about this and take a look. Thanks for looking into this.

[alexec]

Hi - @marcb1 , we've put this work on hold for the moment as we think about how we want third-party integrations to work.

You can take a look at the POC for this: https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/pull/1262/files

Essentially,

1. Connect to Github using OAuth.
2. Receive a webhook messages every time a PR is created.
3. Find the app that should be used to template the preview app
4. Create a preview app.
5. Add a Github status message to the PR
6. When a webhook message closing the PR appears, delete the preview app.