Unexpected behaviour for specified component images (sparse deployment)

[sebastianvitterso]

Short version

Observed behaviour

After running rx create pipeline-job deploy -e prod --follow --from-config -n my-component --image-tag-name my-component=v1.2.3, the other components were also redeployed, but to latest image tag.

At a later point, it suddenly did work as expected. We're not entirely sure why.

Expected behaviour

Running rx create pipeline-job deploy -e prod --follow --from-config -n my-component --image-tag-name my-component=v1.2.3 should, as far as we could read from the documentation (and deduce non-documented details), deploy only the mentioned components. It should leave other components unaffected.

Detailed version

We (ssu-datahub) build all our images in github, and only use deploy (and promote jobs) in radix. We do all our deployments using "custom" github actions that rely on rx CLI commands. I'll include them when relevant below. For all workflow files, see github.com/equinor/ssu-datahub/tree/main/.github/workflows.

I'll describe, in some detail, the recent deployment history of the ssu-datahub app:

Events

1. Initial promotion

Promoted all components from qa to prod. We ran a typical promotion using the web UI, and everything worked as expected. This was on May 11th. According to radix job details, this promotion set versions as follows:

api              equinor/ssu-datahub/api:v1.10.4
web-site         equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260511-ed8d16f
web-site-preview equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260511-ed8d16f
web-editor       equinor/ssu-datahub/web-editor:v1.10.4
datahub          equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260511-ed8d16f

Job details screenshot

2. Deployment of api and editor components to prod with tag=v1.11.0.

Ran "Deploy to production" workflow (run details) with tag=v1.11.0, which in turn ran rx create pipeline-job deploy -e prod --follow --from-config -n api -n web-editor --image-tag-name api=v1.11.0 --image-tag-name web-editor=v1.11.0.

We expected that this would only touch the specified components, and that other components would be left running the current versions, but that didn't happen. We now use specific tags for all of our builds. The details page shows that the web-site and web-site-preview suddenly are set to latest ("from past deployment"):

api              equinor/ssu-datahub/api:v1.11.0
web-site         equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:latest from past deployment
web-site-preview equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:latest from past deployment
web-editor       equinor/ssu-datahub/web-editor:v1.11.0

Job details screenshot

Note that it was particularly bad for us to get the latest version of web-site, because that is 2 months old code, and we no longer push images with that tag name, meaning if this happens again, it will keep deploying that old version.

3. Build and deployment of web-site-preview

Ran "Publish site to preview" workflow (run details, which built an image tagged version-20260601-4f43ffe, and ran rx create pipeline-job deploy -e prod --follow --from-config -n web-site-preview --image-tag-name web-site-preview=version-20260601-4f43ffe.

This actually did work as expected, and we got the following details after running:

api              equinor/ssu-datahub/api:v1.11.0 from past deployment
web-site         equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:latest from past deployment
web-site-preview equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260601-4f43ffe
web-editor       equinor/ssu-datahub/web-editor:v1.11.0 from past deployment

Job details screenshot

4. Deployment of web-site

Ran "Promote preview to live" workflow (run details) which checks what's running in the environment's preview component and then ran rx create pipeline-job deploy -e prod --follow --from-config -n web-site --image-tag-name web-site=version-20260601-4f43ffe --image-tag-name datahub=version-20260601-4f43ffe. The extra datahub= image tag specification here is a remnant from previous setup, no longer in use. See notes below.

This also worked as expected, and we got the following details after running:

api              equinor/ssu-datahub/api:v1.11.0 from past deployment
web-site         equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260601-4f43ffe
web-site-preview equinor/ssu-datahub/web-site:version-20260601-4f43ffe from past deployment
web-editor       equinor/ssu-datahub/web-editor:v1.11.0 from past deployment

Job details screenshot

Notes:

• We have removed the datahub component, it was only present as an artifact of an old deployment. Shouldn't affect this.
• Releavant radixconfig.yaml: Permalink
• Radix CLI version: v1.37.1