Recently, we've been hard at work at Krystal Labs getting our latest product Metritool ready for the closed beta (take a look!). However, that's not stopped a number of updates from being developed and pushed out to DeployHQ, in particular, updates to our build pipeline features as well as a number of other backend enhancements.
We'd just like to let you know about some of those changes.
Build Pipeline - language and framework updates
Along with our latest round of minor language version updates, we've recently deployed support for Node 15, Ruby 3.0 and PHP 8. All of these can be chosen for any project that requires them, via the build configuration area.
We have also added multi-version support for Composer as a result of the addition of Composer v2. Because a very large number of Composer projects will still use v1 for the foreseeable future, it was necessary to provide the ability to select either one from project to project, so you'll now see that available in the list of available options.
To make it a little bit easier, we've also reworked the UI to separate out Language Versions, and Package Managers.
Most of the supported Language Versions will default to the latest available version on our Build Pipeline, but as PHP 8 is still quite new, new projects will continue to default to PHP 7.4 for the moment.
And finally, we have updated our default NPM and Yarn configurations on the build pipeline, meaning all builds will output a much cleaner log, helping with any debugging tasks.
Minor version updates
Along with all the major version updates listed above, the following languages have also had minor version bumps:
Go:
- 1.14.15
- 1.15.8
Node:
- 10.23.3
- 12.20.2
- 14.13.1
PHP:
- 7.3.26
- 7.4.14
Python 2:
- 2.7.18
Python 3:
- 3.5.9
- 3.6.9
- 3.7.9
- 3.8.6
- 3.9.1
Ruby:
- 2.6.6
- 2.7.2
Getting ready for GitHub's discontinuation of password authentication
GitHub have announced that they will be deprecating support for basic account username and password authentication for repositories via HTTPS, with the first brownout happening on 30th June. Fortunately, as they already provide an alternative, but very similar method with Personal Access Tokens (PAT), a relatively small amount of work was required on our side to support it. Mostly, a series of documentation updates in our support centre and the DeployHQ UI.
You may have already noticed that when configuring a GitHub repository via HTTPS, you'll now see a prompt to enter a PAT instead of a password, with a handy link to GitHub's own documentation that explains how to create one.
Otherwise, for those of you that connect via SSH (this is how all repositories connect when automatically configured), you won't need to make any changes.
As well as these recent changes, we've also been working towards a brand new feature we're hoping to make available very soon.
Multi-zone deployment support
Since we were acquired by Krystal Hosting last year, we were particularly excited by the possibilities of what a hosting company with such a large presence both in the UK, and now worldwide, would give us.
For a long time, we've been investigating how we might be able to improve deployment speed and performance for those of our customers who are located further away from our main network in the UK.
DeployHQ is hosted on our very own cloud platform, Katapult. With the recent release of our USA data centre on the East Coast, we're incredibly pleased to announce that we are currently building support for deploying your projects via different locations around the world, starting with the USA.
A number of changes will be made to the backend and UI to support this, primarily, the ability to assign each one of your projects to a particular area, or "Zone".
This means that different projects can be located in different Zones around the world, allowing to you ensure each one is placed in the best area possible to ensure a fast deployment to you and your clients' servers.
Watch this space!
Improved code editing for Config Files, Build and SSH commands
Whilst we've always provided a simple editor for creating resources stored on a DeployHQ project such as Config Files, these have inevitably become more and more complex over time.
To help with this, we're currently working on a comprehensive code editing interface to allow users to more easily view and update their code. This will include, but not be limited to:
- Automatic language recognition and syntax highlighting
- Improvements to tabs and indentation
- Line numbers
We'll be sure to announce this in our blog and other channels, when the feature is available.
As always, if you have any questions about the new and upcoming features, don't hesitate to get in touch.
