SPITIKOS/DOCS/CORE-CONCEPTS/CI-CD-WORKFLOW

Core Concept: CI/CD & GitOps Workflow

This document explains the project's fully automated CI/CD pipeline, which is designed for a multi-repo structure and enables a seamless GitOps workflow with Argo CD.

1. Git Strategy: Multi-Repo

The project is split into multiple repositories to enforce separation of concerns:

  • Application Repositories (e.g., spitikos/homepage): Contain the source code for a single application.
  • spitikos/charts: A dedicated repository containing all Helm charts.
  • spitikos/docs: A dedicated repository containing all project documentation. On push, a GitHub Actions workflow sends a webhook to the api service to trigger a content refresh.
  • spitikos/spitikos: The central repository containing Argo CD manifests and reusable CI/CD workflows.

2. The CI/CD Pipeline: From Code to Live Deployment

The pipeline is a chain reaction that starts with a git push to an application repository and ends with a live deployment, with no manual intervention required.

Step 1: The Trigger (Application Repository)

  • Location: Each application repository (e.g., spitikos/homepage) contains its own CI workflow file (e.g., .github/workflows/ci.yaml).
  • Trigger: The workflow is configured to run on pushes to the main branch.

Step 2: Reusable Release Workflow (spitikos/spitikos)

  • Location: The application's workflow uses the uses: clause to call a reusable workflow named release.yaml located in the central spitikos/spitikos repository.
  • Purpose: This reusable workflow is responsible for the entire release process.

Job 1: docker-publish

  • Builds a single-platform (linux/arm64) Docker image for the application.
  • Tags the image with the short commit SHA of the triggering commit.
  • Pushes the new image to the GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io).

Job 2: update-chart

  • This job runs only after docker-publish succeeds.
  • It checks out the spitikos/charts repository.
  • It finds the values.yaml file for the specific application (e.g., charts/homepage/values.yaml).
  • It replaces the image.tag value with the new commit SHA tag from the docker-publish job.
  • It commits this change directly back to the spitikos/charts repository with a message like ci: deploy homepage version <sha>.
  • It pushes the commit to main.

Step 3: Argo CD (The Deployer)

  • The git push to the spitikos/charts repository is the trigger for the final step.
  • Argo CD, which is constantly monitoring this repository, detects the new commit.
  • Because its sync policy is set to automated, it immediately begins a sync process.
  • It pulls the new Helm chart configuration, renders the templates with the updated image tag, and applies the changes to the cluster.

The new version of the application is now live. This entire process, from code to deployment, is fully automated.