Pantheon Helpdesk

Sometimes it's necessary to push a quick fix without pushing everything that's been going on in dev. This is called a "hotfix", and here's how you do it on Pantheon:

Requirements

• A working knowledge of git tools.
• An up to date clone of your Pantheon git repository.

Get Into the Right Tag

From within your git clone, get a quick list of the existing git tags:

#> git tag
pantheon.initialize
pantheon_live_1
pantheon_test_1
pantheon_test_2
pantheon_test_3
pantheon_test_4

Select the highest live tag and check that out:

#> git checkout pantheon_live_1
Note: checking out 'pantheon_live_1'.

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this
state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout.

If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may
do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:

  git checkout -b new_branch_name

HEAD is now at ....

You are now ready to start work based on the state of the live site!

Generate a new Hotfix Test Tag

Make your hotfixes, then commit them locally. Then tag and push them to test by creating a new test tag with a higher number value:

#> git tag -a pantheon_test_5 -m "Preparing a hotfix"
#> git push origin pantheon_test_5

Note that your tag numbers will vary. We are showing 5 here since in the list of tags above the highest number was 4. Be sure you have the right number before pushing.

Test and Deploy

Note: because we use caching on our git logs, you may not see your hotfix commit listed in the test commit log. However, if you've pushed it up, you should be able to go ahead and test your changes. Once you've verified that your code hotfix is there, you should pull the database back from live to test to be sure you're looking at a good test case before finally pulling it into the live environment.

If your tests are good, you can use the "Pull code" option in the dashboard to deploy your hotfix. This will automatically create a new live tag for you and deploy it.

Orphan Commits

On Pantheon an Orphan Commit is any commit that exists on the Test or Live environment but not in the master branch.

We alert you of these commits because they are vulnerable to being overwritten with the default code workflow. Even when making hotfixs your workflow should push those changes into the master branch at some point. Since we have no way of knowing which future commit will contain those changes we just make you aware of potential code loss.

The alert message on the live environment is only indicating that orphan commits exist. The tags/labels on the right side of the commit message lets you know which environments the commits exist in.