Drupal Update and Deploy Workflow

Use when:

• Applying Drupal dependency updates and deploying to an Acquia environment
• Running the full cycle: update packages → push code → deploy → trigger pipeline

Prerequisites: The following skill sets must be loaded: drupal-maintenance, acli, pipelines-cli.

Workflow

Step 1 — Apply dependency updates

Ask the user: "Do you need to apply dependency updates first, or are updates already done?"

• If updates are needed → follow [Security Updates](../../drupal-maintenance/security-updates/SKILL.md) or [Dependency Updates](../../drupal-maintenance/dependency-updates/SKILL.md) depending on the use case, then return here.
• If updates are already applied → proceed to Step 2.

Step 2 — Fetch application and environments

Always run these before asking the user where to deploy. This ensures the correct application and environment IDs are used.

# List available applications and note the UUID
acli api:applications:list

Output shows application names and UUIDs. Ask the user: "Which application do you want to deploy to?" and confirm the UUID.

# List environments for the selected application
acli api:environments:list <app-uuid>

Output shows environment labels (dev, stage, prod, CDEs), IDs, and the currently deployed branch. Ask the user: "Which environment do you want to deploy to?"

Step 3 — Commit code changes

Before pushing, check for uncommitted changes:

git status

If there are uncommitted changes, ask the user: "Do you want to commit these changes before deploying?"

• If yes — ask for a commit message, then commit:

  git add -A
  git commit -m "<user-provided message>"

• If no — warn the user that uncommitted changes will not be included in the deployment and confirm they want to proceed.

Step 4 — Push code to Acquia Cloud

Push the committed code to the selected environment:

acli push:code

Follow [Pull & Push](../../acli/pull-push/SKILL.md) for full options (selecting environments, handling conflicts).

Step 5 — Switch code on the environment

After pushing, switch the environment to the updated branch using the environment ID from Step 2:

acli api:environments:switchCode <environment-id> --branch=<branch-name>

Follow [Environment Management](../../acli/environment-management/SKILL.md) for deploy options.

Step 6 — Trigger a pipeline build (optional)

Ask the user: "Do you want to trigger a pipeline build for the deployed branch?"

• If yes → follow [Pipeline Operations](../../pipelines-cli/pipeline-operations/SKILL.md) to start the build and stream logs:

pipelines start --application-id=<app-id> --vcs-path=<branch> --tail

• If no → workflow complete.

Step 7 — Run database updates

After code is live on the environment (and after any pipeline completes), run database updates and rebuild the cache via Drush:

# SSH into the environment
acli ssh <environment-id>

# Apply pending database updates
drush updb --yes

# Rebuild caches
drush cr

If using pipelines: Drush commands may already be included in your pipeline definition. Ask the user: "Does your pipeline run `drush updb` and `drush cr`?" - If yes → skip this step. - If no → run the commands above.

Verify Drush can reach the site and the database schema is up to date:

drush status

Expected output includes Drupal bootstrap: Successful and a Drupal version. If Drush fails to bootstrap, do not proceed — check for errors before marking the deployment complete.

Step 8 — Verify deployment

After the pipeline completes (or if skipping pipelines), confirm the environment is running the expected code:

acli api:environments:list <app-uuid>

Check the vcs field of the target environment to confirm the branch matches.

Quick Reference