@sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy

This package provides a build plugin that simplifies the process of deploying an SDEverywhere-generated app to a web server.

Currently this plugin supports deploying to GitHub Pages, a free static site hosting service that is connected to a given GitHub repository. Support for other hosting services (e.g., GitLab Pages, AWS S3) is on the roadmap.

Quick Start

The best way to get started with SDEverywhere is to follow the Quick Start instructions. If you follow those instructions, the @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy package will be added to your project automatically, in which case you can skip the next section and jump straight to the "Usage" section below.

Install

# npm
npm install --save-dev @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy

# pnpm
pnpm add -D @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy

# yarn
yarn add -D @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy

Usage

Note: If you followed the "Quick Start" instructions above and/or are using one of the standard project templates provided by SDEverywhere, the sde.config.js file should already be set up to use plugin-deploy. Reading these instructions can still be helpful if you are setting up a project manually or want to understand how plugin-deploy can be integrated into your project.

To get started:

1. Add @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy as a project "dev" dependency:

cd your-model-project
npm install --save-dev @sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy

2. Update your sde.config.js file to use plugin-deploy. Make sure that deployPlugin is the last step in the plugins array:

import { deployPlugin } from '@sdeverywhere/plugin-deploy'

export async function config() {
  return {
    // ...

    plugins: [
      // ...

      // Make sure that `deployPlugin` is the last step, since it depends on the output of
      // earlier plugins
      deployPlugin({
        // Include options here if needed
      })
    ]
  }
}

3. Update your GitHub Actions workflow to run sde bundle.

How It Works

Overview

At a high level, this plugin has two main functions:

• It copies build products (e.g., your app, model-check bundle, model-check report, etc) to an ideal structure in the sde-staged folder.
• It stores the contents of the sde-staged folder in a separate ("orphan") artifacts branch in your Git repository.

Once the build products are added to the artifacts branch, they can be published to GitHub Pages in a GitHub Actions workflow that runs each time you push changes to your repository (see "Deploying in GitHub Actions" below for an example).

The sde-staged directory

This plugin creates the sde-staged directory in your current branch and copies your app, model-check files, etc to that directory. The sde-staged directory structure is as follows:

  sde-staged/
  ├── app
  |   ├── index.html              # App entrypoint
  |   ├── assets/                 # App assets
  └── extras/
      ├── check-bundle.js         # The model-check bundle file
      └── check-compare-to-base/  # The model-check report

The artifacts branch and directory

Once the sde-staged directory is populated, this plugin folds the contents of sde-staged into the artifacts branch, which contains build artifacts for all branches that have been built. The artifacts directory structure is as follows:

  artifacts/
  ├── index.html             # Top-level index.html file
  ├── latest/
  |   ├── index.html         # Main branch app
  |   ├── assets/            # Main branch assets
  ├── branch/
  |   ├── main/
  |   │   ├── app/           # Main branch app files
  |   │   └── extras/        # Main branch check bundles and reports
  |   ├── chris/1234-test/
  |   │   ├── app/           # Feature branch app files
  |   │   └── extras/        # Feature branch check bundles and reports
  |   └── feature/new-ui/
  |       ├── app/           # Feature branch app files
  |       └── extras/        # Feature branch check bundles and reports
  └── metadata/
      ├── bundles.json       # Listing of available bundles
      └── index.json         # Listing of available branch builds

The top-level index.html file and metadata directory are updated with each build:

• The index.html file provides a convenient overview of the available branch build links that can be accessed during development of your model.
• The metadata/index.json file is used to keep track of all available branch builds and is used to create the top-level index.html file.
• The metadata/bundles.json file is used to keep track of all available bundles, mainly for use by the model-check tool, which allows selecting any available bundle.

Deploying in GitHub Actions

Once the artifacts branch is updated, the artifacts directory can be published to GitHub Pages to make the entire directory structure available at the public URL.

The easiest way to deploy automatically is to create a GitHub Actions workflow that runs every time you push changes to your repository. See below for an example workflow, which you can add to .github/workflows/build.yaml in your project.

Note: If you followed the "Quick Start" instructions above and are using one of the standard project templates provided by SDEverywhere, the template should already contain a .github/workflows/build.yaml file. If so, your project is already set up to deploy to GitHub Pages.

#
# This workflow builds the app and model-check reports, stores them in the `artifacts` branch,
# then deploys the updated `artifacts` directory to GitHub Pages.
#

name: Build

on:
  # Run this workflow on every push to any branch except the special `artifacts` branch
  push:
    branches:
      - '**'
      - '!artifacts'
  # Allow for running this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# Set the GITHUB_TOKEN permissions to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  # Allow pushing to the `artifacts` branch
  contents: write
  # Allow deployment to GitHub Pages
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow one concurrent build
concurrency:
  group: 'build'

jobs:
  build:
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Check out current branch
        uses: actions/checkout@v5
        with:
          # Fetch full history for `artifacts` branch operations
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Set up Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 22
          cache: 'npm'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: ./scripts/ci-build.js

      - name: Check out artifacts branch
        run: git checkout artifacts

      - name: Set up GitHub Pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v5

      - name: Upload GitHub Pages artifacts
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v4
        with:
          path: './artifacts'

      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

Documentation

API documentation (for plugin configuration options) is available in the docs directory.

License

SDEverywhere is distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more details.