Goal
Understand the configuration difference between two environments (missing variables, different values, secret status differences), and safely promote verified configuration to a target environment, instead of directly overwriting historical deployments.
When to use this task
- Confirming staging and production configuration line up before shipping.
- Promoting a set of new variables to production after verifying them on staging.
Prerequisites
- Both the source and target environments already exist, and neither is locked.
Inputs and defaults
| Input | Description |
|---|---|
| Source environment | The environment providing the reference configuration, for example staging |
| Target environment | The environment receiving the change, for example production |
| Secret handling | How secrets from the source environment are handled during promotion (never exposes plaintext by default) |
CLI steps
# Compare configuration differences between two environments
appaloft env diff env_staging env_prod
# Promote configuration to the target environment (creates a new configuration state, doesn't overwrite historical deployments directly)
appaloft env promote env_staging env_prodExpected output and status
diff lists: variables missing from the target environment, variables with different values, and secret status differences (whether it exists, whether it was recently updated) — but never the secret plaintext itself. promote creates a new configuration state on the target environment; this is not the same as an immediate redeploy — an already-running instance is never automatically restarted by a promote.
Verification
After promoting, check whether the target environment’s variable list matches expectations, then decide whether you need to trigger a new deployment so the running instance reads the new configuration.
Rollback / recovery
Promote never overwrites a historical deployment snapshot — if the new deployment after a promotion has problems, you can still roll back to the pre-promotion deployment following Rollback And Recovery.
Troubleshooting links
Related reference pages
Notes
Before promoting, confirm: is the target environment correct, should secrets be regenerated or reused by reference, and do you need to trigger a new deployment immediately after the promote completes.