Deployment

Once your project is initialized and configured, the graft sync command becomes your primary tool for pushing updates to production.

1. Git-Based Automated Deployment

Used for: git-images and git-repo-serverbuild modes.

For Git-based workflows, graft sync acts as a setup and synchronization tool. Instead of building locally, it prepares your automated pipeline:

graft sync

What it does:

1. CI/CD Generation: Automatically generates or updates your GitHub Actions workflows (.github/workflows/graft-deploy.yml).
2. Environment Sync: Extraction of variables from graft-compose.yml and pushes a secure production .env file directly to the server.
3. Remote Configuration: Sends the optimized docker-compose.yml to the server directory.

The Result: After running graft sync, your only step is to push your code:

git add .
git commit -m "update deployment"
git push origin main

The GitHub Action will build your images and trigger the deployment on your server automatically.

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2. Direct & Manual Deployment

Used for: direct-serverbuild or manually triggering builds from a Git repo on the server.

In Direct modes, the CLI handles the entire build and deployment process immediately. For modes like git-manual, you can also trigger remote builds from specific commits.

graft sync [flags]

Common Flags:

• graft sync --no-cache: Force a fresh build (clears Docker build cache).
• graft sync -h: Heave sync. Uploads your source code/configuration only but does not trigger a build or restart.
• graft sync --git: Instructs the server to pull from its remote repository and build from the current branch.
• graft sync --git --branch develop: Pull and build from a specific Git branch.
• graft sync --git --commit abc1234: Pull and build from a specific Git commit hash.

What happens (Direct Mode):

1. Generates production docker-compose.yml.
2. Syncs environment variables and secret files.
3. Uploads source code via rsync (if not using --git).
4. Remotely executes the build and restarts the containers.

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Sync Sub-commands

graft sync <service>

Deploy a specific service only. This is significantly faster as other services remain untouched and running.

graft sync web

graft sync compose

Update only the remote docker-compose.yml and restart services without rebuilding any images.

graft sync compose

Perfect for updating environment variables, port mappings, or Traefik labels.