createDeployment.md

name	example	route	scope	type
Create a deployment	octokit.rest.repos.createDeployment({ owner, repo, ref })	POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/deployments	repos	API method

Create a deployment

Deployments offer a few configurable parameters with certain defaults.

The ref parameter can be any named branch, tag, or SHA. At GitHub we often deploy branches and verify them before we merge a pull request.

The environment parameter allows deployments to be issued to different runtime environments. Teams often have multiple environments for verifying their applications, such as production, staging, and qa. This parameter makes it easier to track which environments have requested deployments. The default environment is production.

The auto_merge parameter is used to ensure that the requested ref is not behind the repository's default branch. If the ref is behind the default branch for the repository, we will attempt to merge it for you. If the merge succeeds, the API will return a successful merge commit. If merge conflicts prevent the merge from succeeding, the API will return a failure response.

By default, commit statuses for every submitted context must be in a success state. The required_contexts parameter allows you to specify a subset of contexts that must be success, or to specify contexts that have not yet been submitted. You are not required to use commit statuses to deploy. If you do not require any contexts or create any commit statuses, the deployment will always succeed.

The payload parameter is available for any extra information that a deployment system might need. It is a JSON text field that will be passed on when a deployment event is dispatched.

The task parameter is used by the deployment system to allow different execution paths. In the web world this might be deploy:migrations to run schema changes on the system. In the compiled world this could be a flag to compile an application with debugging enabled.

Users with repo or repo_deployment scopes can create a deployment for a given ref.

Merged branch response

You will see this response when GitHub automatically merges the base branch into the topic branch instead of creating a deployment. This auto-merge happens when:

• Auto-merge option is enabled in the repository
• Topic branch does not include the latest changes on the base branch, which is master in the response example
• There are no merge conflicts

If there are no new commits in the base branch, a new request to create a deployment should give a successful response.

Merge conflict response

This error happens when the auto_merge option is enabled and when the default branch (in this case master), can't be merged into the branch that's being deployed (in this case topic-branch), due to merge conflicts.

Failed commit status checks

This error happens when the required_contexts parameter indicates that one or more contexts need to have a success status for the commit to be deployed, but one or more of the required contexts do not have a state of success.

octokit.rest.repos.createDeployment({
  owner,
  repo,
  ref,
});

Parameters

name	required	description
owner	yes
repo	yes
ref	yes	The ref to deploy. This can be a branch, tag, or SHA.
task	no	Specifies a task to execute (e.g., deploy or deploy:migrations).
auto_merge	no	Attempts to automatically merge the default branch into the requested ref, if it's behind the default branch.
required_contexts	no	The status contexts to verify against commit status checks. If you omit this parameter, GitHub verifies all unique contexts before creating a deployment. To bypass checking entirely, pass an empty array. Defaults to all unique contexts.
payload	no
environment	no	Name for the target deployment environment (e.g., production, staging, qa).
description	no	Short description of the deployment.
transient_environment	no	Specifies if the given environment is specific to the deployment and will no longer exist at some point in the future. Default: false
production_environment	no	Specifies if the given environment is one that end-users directly interact with. Default: true when environment is production and false otherwise.

See also: GitHub Developer Guide documentation.