Explore an Environment
Make sure an Environment is ready, open a deployed Service, and use Lifecycle's pull request comments.
After Lifecycle deploys your first Environment, make sure that its Services are ready before you start testing. You can examine the Environment in the Lifecycle UI and use the comments on your pull request to change or monitor it.
Make sure that the Environment is ready
- Follow the View details link in the Lifecycle comment, or open Environments in Lifecycle and select your Environment.
- Make sure that the Environment status is Deployed.
- Select each Service you plan to test. A correctly deployed Service shows Ready and the message Kubernetes pods are ready.
- Select Visit URL to open a public Service.
If a Service shows Build failed, Deploy failed, or Error, open its Console. See Troubleshoot a failed deployment for the recovery workflow.
Test your application
Open a deployed public Service from Visit URL or from the pull request comment, then:
- Test the smallest user path that shows the deployed change.
- Make sure that calls to each necessary backend or dependency succeed.
- Check only non-secret runtime configuration through a surface your application intentionally exposes.
- Go back to Lifecycle to examine a different Service or its logs.
Use the Mission Control comment
Lifecycle’s editable pull-request comment is the GitHub control surface for the Environment. It can contain:
- Service checkboxes: Select or deselect optional Services.
- Branch or external URL values: Change the source used for an eligible Service.
- Environment ID and variable overrides: Apply changes to this Environment without editing the repository configuration.
- Actions: Queue a redeploy and run other configured operations.
- Options: Change conditional settings that the installation exposes.
Lifecycle parses the comment as product input. Its headings and syntax control the parsed values. The Mission Control comment reference has correct examples.
Follow status updates
Lifecycle adds status comments by default. It updates them when the Environment status changes. An operator can turn that repository default off. If the operator turns it off, apply the configured status-comment label.
Use the status comment to see:
- Current Environment changes
- Each Service’s current status
- Available build-log links from the deployment backend
Operators can change the default label names. See Configurable labels before you write automation that uses a literal label.
Next steps
Next, configure your Environment and try selecting one optional Service from your own configuration.