Sometimes you want to mess around testing something complex (untestable locally e.g. AMI or config changes) in a real env, but you don't want to block the CODE/PROD deployment path.
The simplest way to do that is to spin up a new Auto scaling Group in environment TEST, and deploy your build there.
- build your branch of platform/your ami/whatever it is you plan to test. If you want to test frontend itself, we don't produce artifacts for a PR build so follow the instructions at the bottom to build artifacts.
- deploy platform to stage TEST
- deploy a build of frontend to TEST if necessary (this will copy the file but won't be able to find the ASG)
- go to the appropriate launch configuration in AWS EC2 console as admin/cloudformation e.g. frontend-CODE-ArticleServer-1P6YIUG2KIZWB
- Copy it, and give it a good name e.g. john-test-article-launch
- edit the "details" and open the advanced details.
- change
export FACTER_gu_stage='CODE'
to refer to TEST stage instead - change whatever else you want - e.g. AMI
- make sure it's still in the GuardianAccess and ApplicationServer security groups (under non-vpc)
- create the launch configuration /Note: it's worth using your own key, especially if you are changing puppet provisioning, as otherwise you can't log in and look when puppet inevitably fails the first time/
- click the Create an ASG with this launch configuration button
- call it john-test-article-asg or similar
- give it an availability zone (you probably don't need a load balancer)
- make sure it has 1 instance
- delete the ASG and Launch config
- click the ... icon next to Run in dotcom frontend build
- change the BranchName in the parameters screen to your branch
- run the build - it will create the build and upload to riffraff
- deploy the build with riffraff to TEST