Technical Details

This topic discusses technical implementation details about pipeline deployment in Magento 2.2 and later. Improvements can be divided into the following areas:

• Configuration management
• Changes in the Magento Admin
• cron installation and removal

This topic also discusses the recommended workflow for pipeline deployment and provides some examples to help you understand how it works.

Before you get started, review the prerequisite for your development, build, and production systems.

Configuration management

To enable you to synchronize and maintain the configuration of your development and production systems, we use the following override scheme.

As the diagram shows, we get configuration values in the following order:

1. Environment variables, if they exist, override all other values.
2. From the shared configuration files env.php and config.php. Values in env.php override values in config.php.
3. From values stored in the database.
4. If no value exists in any of those sources, we use either the default value or NULL.

Manage the shared configuration

The shared configuration is stored in app/etc/config.php, which should be in source control.

Set the shared configuration in the Magento Admin in your development (or Magento Commerce (Cloud) integration) system and write the configuration to config.php using the magento app:config:dump command.

Manage the system-specific configuration

The system-specific configuration is stored in app/config/env.php, which should not be in source control.

Set the system-specific configuration in the Magento Admin in your development (or Magento Commerce (Cloud) integration) system and write the configuration to env.php using the magento app:config:dump command.

This command also writes sensitive settings to env.php.

Manage the sensitive configuration

The sensitive configuration is also stored in app/etc/env.php.

You can manage the sensitive configuration in any of the following ways:

• Environment variables
• Save the sensitive configuration in env.php on your production system using the magento config:set:sensitive command

Configuration settings locked in the Magento Admin

Any configuration settings in config.php or env.php are locked in the Magento Admin; that is, those settings cannot be changed in the Admin. Use the magento config:set or magento config:set --lock command to change the settings in the config.php or env.php files.

Changes in the Magento Admin

We changed the following behavior in the Magento Admin in production mode:

• You cannot enable or disable cache types in the Admin

• Developer settings are unavailable (Stores > Settings > Configuration > Advanced > Developer), including:

  • Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
  • Merge CSS and JavaScript
  • Server-side or client-side LESS compilation
  • Inline translations
• As discussed previously, any configuration setting in config.php or env.php is locked and cannot be edited in the Admin.

• You can change the Admin locale only to languages used by deployed themes

  The following figure shows an example of the Account Setting> Interface Locale list in the Admin showing only two deployed locales:

  

• You cannot change locale configurations for any scope using the Admin Panel. We recommend making these changes before switching to Production mode.

  You can still configure the locale using environment variables or the config:set CLI command with the path general/locale/code.

cron installation and removal

In version 2.2 for the first time, we help you set up your Magento cron job by providing the magento cron:install command. This command sets up a Magento crontab as the user who runs the command.

We also enable you to remove the Magento crontab using the magento cron:remove command.

Recommended pipeline deployment workflow

The following diagram shows how we recommend you use pipeline deployment to manage the configuration.

Development system

On your development system, you make configuration changes in the Magento Admin and generate the shared configuration, app/etc/config.php and the system-specific configuration, app/etc/env.php. Check Magento code and the shared configuration into source control and push it to the build server.

You should also install extensions and customize Magento code on the development system.

On your development system:

1. Set the configuration in the Magento Admin.

2. Use the magento app:config:dump command to write the configuration to the file system.

   • app/etc/config.php is the shared configuration, which contains all settings except sensitive and system-specific settings. This file should be in source control.

   • app/etc/env.php is the system-specific configuration, which contains settings that are unique to a particular system (for example, host names and port numbers). This file should not be in source control.

3. Add your modified code and the shared configuration to source control.

Build system

The build system compiles code and generates static view files for themes registered in Magento. It doesn’t need a connection to the Magento database; it needs only the Magento codebase.

On your build system:

1. Pull the shared configuration file from source control.
2. Use the magento setup:di:compile command to compile code.
3. Use the magento setup:static-content:deploy -f command to update static file view files.
4. Check the updates into source control.

Production system

On your production system (that is, your live store) you pull generated assets and code updates from source control and set system-specific and sensitive configuration settings using the command line or environment variables.

On your production system:

1. Start maintenance mode.
2. Pull code and configuration updates from source control.
3. If you use Magento Commerce, stop queue workers.
4. Use the magento app:config:import command to import configuration changes in the production system.
5. If you installed components that changed the database schema, run magento setup:upgrade --keep-generated to update the database schema and data, preserving generated static files.
6. To set system-specific settings, use either the magento config:set command or environment variables.
7. To set sensitive settings, use either the magento config:sensitive:set command or environment variables.
8. Clean (also referred to as flush) the Magento cache.
9. End maintenance mode.

Configuration management commands

We provide the following commands to help you manage the configuration:

• magento app:config:dump to write Magento Admin configuration settings to config.php and env.php (except for sensitive settings)

• magento config:set to set the values of system-specific settings on the production system.

  Use the optional --lock option to lock the option in the Magento Admin (that is, make the setting uneditable). If a setting is already locked, use the --lock option to change the setting.

• magento config:sensitive:set to set the values of sensitive settings on the production system.
• magento app:config:import to import configuration changes from config.php and env.php to the production system.

Configuration management examples

This section shows examples of managing the configuration so you can see how changes are made to config.php and env.php.

Change the default locale

This section shows the change made to config.php when you change the default weight unit using the Magento Admin (Stores > Settings > Configuration > General > General > Locale Options).

After you make the change in the Admin, run php bin/magento app:config:dump to write the value to config.php. The value is written to the general array under locale as the following snippet from config.php shows:

      'general' =>
      array (
        'locale' =>
        array (
          'code' => 'en_US',
          'timezone' => 'America/Chicago',
          'weight_unit' => 'kgs',
        ),

Change several configuration settings

This section discusses making the following configuration changes:

• Adding a website, store, and store view (Stores > All Stores)
• Changing the default email domain (Stores > Settings > Configuration > Customers > Customer Configuration)
• Setting the PayPal API Username and API password (Stores > Settings > Configuration > Sales > Payment Methods > PayPal > Required PayPal Settings)

After you make the change in the Admin, run php bin/magento app:config:dump on your development system. This time, not all of your changes are written to config.php; in fact, only the website, store, and store view are written to that file as the following snippets show.

config.php

config.php contains:

• Changes to the website, store, and store view.
• Non-system-specific Elasticsearch settings
• Non-sensitive PayPal settings
• Comments that inform you of sensitive settings that were omitted from config.php

      'new' =>
      array (
        'website_id' => '2',
        'code' => 'new',
        'name' => 'New website',
        'sort_order' => '0',
        'default_group_id' => '2',
        'is_default' => '0',
      ),

      2 =>
      array (
        'group_id' => '2',
        'website_id' => '2',
        'code' => 'newstore',
        'name' => 'New store',
        'root_category_id' => '2',
        'default_store_id' => '2',
      ),

     'newview' =>
      array (
        'store_id' => '2',
        'code' => 'newview',
        'website_id' => '2',
        'group_id' => '2',
        'name' => 'New store view',
        'sort_order' => '0',
        'is_active' => '1',
      ),

      'payment' =>
      array (
        'paypal_express' =>
        array (
          'active' => '0',
          'in_context' => '0',
          'title' => 'PayPal Express Checkout',
          'sort_order' => NULL,
          'payment_action' => 'Authorization',
          'visible_on_product' => '1',
          'visible_on_cart' => '1',
          'allowspecific' => '0',
          'verify_peer' => '1',
          'line_items_enabled' => '1',
          'transfer_shipping_options' => '0',
          'solution_type' => 'Mark',
          'require_billing_address' => '0',
          'allow_ba_signup' => 'never',
          'skip_order_review_step' => '1',
        ),

env.php

The default email domain system-specific configuration setting is written to app/etc/env.php.

The PayPal settings are written to neither file because the magento app:config:dump command does not write sensitive settings. You must set the PayPal settings on the production system using the following commands:

php bin/magento config:sensitive:set paypal/wpp/api_username <username>
php bin/magento config:sensitive:set paypal/wpp/api_password <password>

Prerequisite for your development, build, and production systems

File permissions and ownership must be consistent across development, build, and production systems. To make this work, you must either:

• All of the following:

  • Set up the same Magento file system owner user name on all systems
  • Make sure the web server runs as the same user on all systems
  • Make sure the Magento file system owner is in the web server group on all systems

• Change Magento file system permissions and ownership on each system as necessary using the following guidelines:

  • Development and build: Set pre-installation ownership and permissions (two users)
  • Production: Magento ownership and permissions in development and production

  If you choose this approach, you must set file system permissions and ownership every time you pull code from your build system (if the Magento file system owner or web server user are different on your build system).

For more information

• For a complete list of system-specific and sensitive settings and corresponding configuration paths, see Sensitive and system-specific configuration paths reference.
• config.php reference for detailed information about the shared configuration file
• env.php reference for detailed information about the system-specific configuration file

Next steps

• Set up your development systems
• Set up your build system
• Set up your production system