LEARN. PRACTICE. GROW.Concept and mechanism
A release must connect code, artifact, configuration, tests, and approval. Mutable tags are insufficient identity: if release pointed to X during QA and now points to Y, X’s tests do not automatically follow Y. Retain the digest and corresponding evidence. Cloud Deploy associates a release with a pipeline snapshot at creation. Changing the pipeline later can produce a mismatch warning on promotion; proceeding does not convert the old release to the new definition. Confirm effective configuration and decide whether it represents approved intent. When a target requires approval, a notification-topic message reports that need; consuming the message is not approving the rollout.
Guided application
In a fictional weekend change, the team requires independent approval. Setting requireApproval establishes a required decision, but permissions must prevent one person from satisfying the intended separation alone. After promotion, compare canary and stable versions using interpretable populations and volumes. The global average can hide regression in a small exposed fraction. Define when to stop, reduce exposure, and recover in advance. The plan must include schema and data: restoring an old image does not recreate a removed column. For flow improvement, use the current five DORA metrics with clear definitions. Failed-deployment recovery is not an undifferentiated average of every incident; retain separate operational metrics for causes outside that scope.
Six deployments requiring intervention out of forty correspond to a 15% change fail rate.
Common pitfalls
Tag as digest; notification as approval; current pipeline as snapshot; image rollback as data recovery.
Related topics: Organization, identity, and visibility · Infrastructure, revisions, and environments · Identities, secrets, and supply chain
Promote evaluated identity and configuration with compatible recovery.
Reference: Cloud Deploy release promotion · Current linked guide; edition date unconfirmed (2026-09-30 inspection)