Dockhold

How deploys work

Connect a repo once. After that, you deploy by pushing to your main branch.

There is no CLI and no deploy command. You point Dockhold at a GitHub repo, and every push to your main branch ships a new version. Here is what happens from your push to your app being live.

The flow

  1. You push to the main branch of a connected repo.
  2. GitHub notifies Dockhold that a push happened.
  3. Dockhold builds your app. It detects your stack and builds an image for you. No build config needed for most apps.
  4. The new version goes live with a rolling update. The old version keeps serving until the new one is healthy, so there is no downtime.

Your app stays at the same URL across deploys: https://your-app.dockhold.app. You can watch each build happen live in your dashboard.

Your first deploy

  1. Push to GitHub. Put your app in a GitHub repository.
  2. Connect the repo. Open the dashboard and connect it. Dockhold auto-detects the stack (Node, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Deno, Bun, Java, PHP) and builds it.
  3. Go live. Your app comes up at its dockhold.app URL.

One rule matters above all: your app must listen on 0.0.0.0 and read its port from the PORT environment variable. Don't hardcode a port and don't bind to localhost, or traffic can't reach it. See the Quickstart for examples.

Auto-deploy on push

How auto-deploy gets set up depends on how you connected the repo:

  • Connected with the GitHub app: auto-deploy is on from the start. Every push to your main branch deploys. Nothing else to do.
  • Using a personal access token instead: turn on auto-deploy in your app's GitOps settings, then add the push webhook it shows you to your repo on GitHub (Settings, then Webhooks). Pick the application/json content type and the push event.

Either way, Dockhold verifies every push notification cryptographically before it builds, so no one can trigger a deploy to your app without your secret. You can rotate that secret anytime from GitOps settings. Update it on GitHub at the same time so the two stay in sync.

Custom builds

Most apps need no build config. When you want full control, add a Dockerfile at the repo root and Dockhold uses it as-is. It never overrides your Dockerfile. To point at one in a subfolder, add a dockhold.json at the root: 

{ "build": { "dockerfile": "path/to/Dockerfile" } }

Next: connect a private repo, or set up environment variables and secrets.