Implementing Deployment Preview GHA

[Sukriti-sood]

The purpose of this discussion is to capture all ways in which we can implement Deployment Preview GHA.

One of way I found by taking inspiration from here is we can have Open-Horizon-Bot Account that will create repostory of pr opened and deploy it on gh-pages and we will have preview link of that PR in comment, and Once the PR is merged, we can delete the repo from Open-Horizon-Bot Account.

[joewxboy]

we can ... create repository of PR opened and deploy it on gh-pages and we will have preview link of that PR in comment, and Once the PR is merged, we can delete the repo from Open-Horizon-Bot Account.

Seems like this approach will only allow you to preview a single PR at a time, right?

And is the only reason this approach is being used is that it builds and tests the site with github-pages so it's a "perfect" preview for what will happen in production?

[Sukriti-sood]

GHA will run on event when PR is opened so whenever pr is opened or updated ,it will display the preview.

[joewxboy]

What I mean is ... it appears that it is hard-coded to a specific single repository, so only one PR can be tested. If that PR is still in the process of being tested another PR will have to wait until this one is merged or closed, right?

[Sukriti-sood]

Its not hard coded to a specific single repository... There is a command gh repo create win11bot/pr-${{ github.event.pull_request.number }} --public which is creating repository with PR number.

[joewxboy]

Thanks, @Sukriti-sood . What is a good way to test this?

[Sukriti-sood]

@joewxboy If you meant demo, you can Check this PR.

[joewxboy]

OK, that looks really nice! You've answered all my questions.

[Abhijay007]

@johnwalicki do you have any suggestions for deployment Preview bot? @Sukriti-sood have some good suggestions, so john can you please tell us whether we are following the right approach or not?

[joewxboy]

BTW, this approach may also help developers editing repo-based docs (like anax repo, /docs folder) to preview their documentation and resolve variables, check hyperlinks, and confirm look-and-feel.