Targets

A Target is a repository that holds your application code or scripts. The configuration specifies targets to track. When a target repository receives a new commit, Pico will pull it and run the command specified in its configuration block for that target.

Pico works great with declarative tools like Docker Compose or dnscontrol. For example, say you have a web application with a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml file, you can create a Target in the configuration like so:

T({

name: "my_app",

url: "https://github.com/mycompany/some-app",

branch: "dev",

up: ["docker-compose", "up", "-d", "--build"],

});

And every time you commit changes to your project, Pico will pull the changes and then run:

docker-compose up -d --build

Inside that repository - building your application and updating the running container.

Target Repository Storage

Repositories are stored on the filesystem in a directory specified by the --directory flag. They are just regular Git repositories so you can manually run Git commands inside them if you want to.

info

Rolling back the history of a target by running Git commands in the directory will have no effect. Pico works by repeatedly pulling a Git repository and checking for changes.

caution

Getting a repository into "detached head" state will cause Pico to error when checking the repository. It will not stop Pico from running, but the target will cease to be triggered until the state is returned to normal.

The best way to do this is to simply delete the local copy of the repository.

Branches

If you specified a branch as part of the T call in configuration then this branch name will be appended to the repository directory path after an underscore (_).

For example:

T({

name: "test",

url: "https://github.com/mycompany/some-app",

branch: "dev",

up: ["docker-compose", "up", "-d", "--build"],

});

And assuming your --directory was set to /cache the repository would be stored at:

/cache/test_dev`

Omitting the branch field entirely will default to master and will not result in any path suffix.