Feature spotlight: Sandbox actions

Sandboxes are dynamic preview environments launched from a Git branch, tag, or pull request. A feature unique to Buddy, they remove the requirement for additional staging infrastructure, allowing developers to faster collect feedback from the clients and properly test the product before the release.

Each sandbox can be provisioned with dedicated actions. For example, you can upload files to the sandbox from your pipeline filesystem, or start/stop a sandbox on a predefined condition. This way you can create workflows such as the one below, which launches a sandbox every time a new branch is created in the repository and destroys it when the branch is removed:

What's new

The current roster of sandbox actions looks like this:

1. Transfer to sandbox
2. Create sandbox
3. Operate sandbox
4. SSH to sandbox
5. Download from sandbox (new)

Transfer to sandbox

This action lets you upload your applaction to the selected sandbox from your repository or pipeline filesystem. It works pretty much like other deployment actions in Buddy.

Create sandbox

Here you can launch a new sandbox from either the base sandbox, a snapshot, or custom settings.

Operate sandbox

This action combines a couple of old sandbox actions into one entity. You can use it to start, stop, destroy, or snapshot a certain sandbox according to specified conditions, a use case that we described in detail in our blog post on the new pipeline trigger events.

SSH to sandbox

This type of SSH lets you run basically any command on the sandbox, just like on any other remote.

Download from sandbox

The newest addition to the pack is sandbox download. This one is useful for downloading the outcome of operations performed on the sandbox.