Profiles: Activation

The activation option is optional and allows you to activate a profile using regular expression matching of either Devspace or environment variables. An activation is configured with the profile it activates in devspace.yaml.

Example: Defining a Profile Activation using vars

vars:
  ENV:
    default: development
profiles:
- name: production
  activation:
  - vars:
      ENV: production
  patches:
  - op: replace
    path: images.backend.image
    value: john/prodbackend

The production profile would be activated when the Devspace variable ENV has value production. In this example, it has a default value of development, so it is not activated unless you override the value using --var ENV=production

Example: Defining a Profile Activation using Environment Variables

profiles:
- name: production
  activation:
  - env:
      ENV: "production"
  patches:
  - op: replace
    path: images.backend.image
    value: john/prodbackend

The production profile would be activated when the environment variable ENV has value production:

Example: Regular Expression Activation

profiles:
- name: production
  activation:
  - env:
      ENV: "prod-\d+"
  patches:
  - op: replace
    path: images.backend.image
    value: john/prodbackend

The profile production would be activated when the environment variable ENV matches the regular expression prod-\d+. This can be useful for matching environment variables that have dynamic values. Regular expressions will have start of string (^) and end of string ($) anchors added automatically to avoid unexpected substring matching.

Example: Matching All

When multiple env or vars name/expression pairs are specified in the same activation, all expressions must match to activate the profile. For example, the production profile is activated when the environment variable CI is true and the Devspace variable ENV is development:

profiles:
- name: production
  activation:
  - env:
      CI: "true"
    vars:
      ENV: "development"
  patches:
  - op: replace
    path: images.backend.image
    value: john/devbackend

Combining env and vars

While possible to activate profiles using environment variables and Devspace variables, vars can also be populated through environment variables. In the above example, we could have also defined CI as a Devspace variable with source: env and only used vars in the activation.

Example: Matching Any

When env or vars are used in multiple activations, the profile is activated when any expression matches. In this example, the production profile is activated when either match their expressions:

profiles:
- name: production
  activation:
  - env:
      CI: "true"
  - vars:
      ENV: "development"
  patches:
  - op: replace
    path: images.backend.image
    value: john/devbackend

Dependency Activations

When dependencies are referenced from a devspace.yaml, the dependency's profile activations will also be evaluated. In this example, any profile activations in ./component-1/devspace.yaml or ./component-2/devspace.yaml would be evaluated.

dependencies:
  component-1:
    path: ./component-1
  component-2:
    path: ./component-2

Example: Disable Activations by Dependency

The disableProfileActivation option can be used to disable profile activations for specific dependencies. In the following example, the activations for ./component-1/devspace.yaml would be ignored, while the activations in ./component-2/devspace.yaml would be evaluated:

dependencies:
  component-1:
    path: ./component-1
    disableProfileActivation: true
  component-2:
    path: ./component-2

Disable Activations Globally

The --disable-profile-activation flag can be used to disable all profile activations, including those specifed within each dependency's devspace.yaml.