Deployment tooling internals
Evolve deploys itself: php artisan deploy rsyncs a release to the server, the evolve:env:* commands declare and verify environments, and Envoy tasks move data. The user side is on Deployment and Environments.
Declarations
core/config/evolve.php → deployment: default (the environment deploy uses without an argument), environments keyed by name with type (live, staging, testing read as staging, development), target (directory under server.path), optional url and php-bin; keep-releases; server (user, host, path, php-bin); hooks.before (local) and hooks.after (remote). The legacy target and allowed-targets keys still work when environments is empty.
core/src/Deployment/:
| Class | Role |
|---|---|
Environments (singleton) | parses the declarations into DeploymentEnvironment objects |
DeploymentEnvironment | one environment: name, type, target, url, php binary, remote paths |
EnvironmentType (enum) | the policy per type: requiresNamedConfirmation(), allowsForcedDeploy(), warnsOnNonDefaultBranch(), acceptsDatabasePush(), allowsDebug(), debugsByDefault(), cachesPagesByDefault(), mustProtect(), redirectsMail(), showsBanner(), emitsTracking(), appEnv() |
RemoteShell, RemoteShellFactory | SSH command execution with one connection per command batch |
ServerEnv, EnvTemplate | reading, masking and generating the server .env from core/src/Console/Commands/stubs/server-env.stub |
SharedStorage | shared/storage/app creation, migration of release uploads into it, linking (2.12) |
Evolve::environmentType() resolves the running instance's type from EVOLVE_ENV_TYPE, falling back to APP_ENV. Everything posture-related (mail redirect, preview protection, banner, noindex, tracking emission, debug) asks the enum.
The deploy command
core/src/Console/Commands/Deploy.php (deploy {environment?} {--dry-run} {--keep-releases} {--rollback} {--file=} {--force} {--keep-caches}; --target is deprecated in favour of the environment argument, --force is ignored on live): resolves the environment, applies the policy (typed confirmation for live, branch warning), runs hooks.before, probes the remote (a failed probe aborts rather than building a release without uploads, 2.11), creates the new release directory as a copy of the live one, rsyncs the working copy with core/bin/deploy_exclude.txt (publishable as evolve.deploy-exclude), links shared storage, runs migrations and the cache rebuild remotely, clears the page cache of the new release, runs hooks.after, switches the current symlink, purges old releases beyond keep-releases, and notifies Slack (services.slack.webhook-url) with Notifications\NewReleaseDeployed or ReleaseRolledBack. It refuses to sync a stale Livewire 2 bundle (2.11).
Environment commands
evolve:env:list, evolve:env:setup (remote directories, server .env from the template, database, media), evolve:env:show (masked remote .env), evolve:env:diff (keys across example, local and remote), evolve:env:verify {environment?} {--all} (APP_ENV and EVOLVE_ENV_TYPE against the declaration, debug off on live, Sentry DSN on live, APP_URL and whether the declared URL answers, key drift against .env.example, a stale published Livewire bundle), evolve:db:copy (with sanitize hook, confirmation by type, settings cache forgotten on the receiving side), evolve:logs, evolve:releases, evolve:artisan (allowlisted read-only commands), evolve:remote:cat, evolve:remote:status (health in one round trip), evolve:ssh. All under core/src/Console/Commands/.
Envoy
core/bin/Envoy.blade.php, imported by the project's Envoy.blade.php: media:down, media:up, database:down, database:up, env:down, env:up, server:env, server:migrate, server:key, server:clean, server:diff. Destructive tasks (database:up, media:up, env:up) require typing the target name and write timestamped safety backups first (2.5); database pushes never go into live (acceptsDatabasePush()).
Health hooks
evolve:env:verify and the environment consistency health check both compare APP_ENV with EVOLVE_ENV_TYPE; the canonical host check fails when the page cache is on and APP_URL is not a real host.