Atomic Deployment

Atomic deployment enables zero-downtime deployment through symbolic link switching for consistency.

How It Works

When using --atomic, deployment:

1. Creates a timestamped release directory: releases/20260303_034945/
2. Uploads files to the new directory
3. Updates the current symbolic link to point to the new directory

Directory Structure

remote_deploy_path/
├── releases/
│   ├── 20260303_034945/
│   ├── 20260303_035012/
│   └── 20260303_035045/
└── current -> releases/20260303_035045

Web Server Configuration

Your web server should serve from remote_deploy_path/current.

Nginx Example

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;
    root /var/www/prod/current;
    index index.html;
    
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Apache Example

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName your-domain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/prod/current
</VirtualHost>

Benefits

• Zero Downtime: Switching happens instantly
• Atomicity: Either everything succeeds or everything fails
• Instant Rollback: Just change the symbolic link
• Version Isolation: Each release is stored independently

Usage

Shipfe uses atomic deployment by default for all deployments.

# Deploy to default environment (atomic by default)
shipfe deploy

# Deploy to specified environment (atomic by default)
shipfe deploy --profile prod