GitHub Actions and BitBucket Pipelines are amazing. You can control what is run using yaml files in your codebase.
You can run just about any command, and they provide a really powerful interface for browsing jobs and logs.
Many people are unaware, you can also control where your scripts are run. If you setup a tool called a Git Runner, you can run Git Actions anywhere, including from your local machine.
The new Operations Site Runner allows you to spawn environments very quickly using GitHub Actions on your own servers.
It provides a full lifecycle for every pull request, spinning up a new environment, running tests, and leaving it there for humans to review.
I recently moved ThinkDrop.net to this new system, so I figured it was time to demonstrate it.
Check out this quick 10 minute video of me deploying the Gin admin theme to my Drupal site!
I've been building and designing automation systems for almost 20 years. I built DevShop on top of Aegir to implement continuous integration and quality control over 10 years ago.
Running CI systems is hard. Really hard. There needs to be an active task runner. A dashboard. API integrations. Tooling. Network Access. It can be incredibly complicated. In the Enterprise? Forget it.
I've been imagining a new system for many years, and here it is.
In our line of work, we often deal with many different websites. One of my clients, Vardot, is responsible for over 100 websites. To ensure each site is running smoothly, they needed a tool to keep track of all of them in one place, and hired me to build a "Drupal Support Dashboard", or DSD.
