Neon•2y ago

deep-jade

Vercel deployments are failing due to Neon Branching check

After enabling the Vercel & Neon integration all my deployments through the Vercel CLI are failing due to the Non branching check. The only log I can find is the one in the picture ("Status not available"). However, from the neon side it looks like the preview branches are being created. Please help.

30 Replies

metropolitan-bronze•2y ago

Hello, Sorry to hear you're having trouble with the integration. I suppose this is for preview environments right? Can you please verify if the environment variables for previews in Vercel are correct?

equal-aqua•2y ago

all my deployments through the Vercel CLI

Do you mind sharing more details about your setup? Are you using the Vercel CLI locally to create preview deployments?

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

Thanks for the prompt reply. Yes, this is in preview environments. About my setup: the deployment is being done from CircleCI using vercel deploy. The build itself is being done in Vercel, although the check fails before the build completes. As far as the environment variables... I see that DATABASE_URL is missing and the DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED is duplicated:

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

Update on some troubleshooting from our side: we noticed we had a "DATABASE_URL" environment variable when the integration was added and we assumed this could have been part of the problem. So we removed the integration, removed our "DATABASE_URL" environment variable, and added the integration again. This time we did see more environment variables added by the Neon plugin:

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

However, the check is still failing:

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

And FWIW, Ive notived that there are not environment variables set for the preview environment. I suppose these are set once the branch is created. Is this right?

equal-aqua•2y ago

I think the issue is that you're deploying from CI while also using the Vercel integration The way the integration works might mess up with your other flow because I believe under the hood the Vercel integration cancels a deployment that's triggered by opening a PR, injects the environment variable, and redeploys

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

I do not think that is the case, since I am not using the github integration, hence preview deployments do not get created when opening a PR. Plus, my deployment build succeds but the CLI throws an error because of the Neon check. What is it being checked there? The deployment is triggered through the CLI in CircleCI. Not by opening a PR. is the check there to cancel the deployment? If that is its purpose, then yes this is the issue

equal-aqua•2y ago

is the check there to cancel the deployment? If that is its purpose, then yes this is the issue

Pretty sure that's the reason cc @Mike J correct me if I'm wrong please

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

Thanks for the support. If that is the case, then we wont be able to use the vercel integration and we will have to build our own using Neon's CLI. However, something is not checking for me. If the check is there to cancel the deployment, why is the integration not setting the environment variables and kicking off a redeploy? So... Ive gotten the branch creation through the CLI inside Circle CI working and I am now passing the DATABASE_URL environment variable to my preview deployment. My only concern is how to do the clean up of these branches once the preview is promoted to prod or abandoned. Any help would be appreciated. We will make sure to write a blog post of the learnings.

equal-aqua•2y ago

We have an example repo here https://github.com/neondatabase/preview-branches-with-vercel

GitHub

GitHub - neondatabase/preview-branches-with-vercel: Example project...

Example project that shows how you can create a branch for every preview deployment on Vercel using GitHub actions - neondatabase/preview-branches-with-vercel

equal-aqua•2y ago

My only concern is how to do the clean up of these branches once the preview is promoted to prod or abandoned.

So the idea is you would name the neon branch with something you can infer later (e.g. the git branch name), this way you can delete it later when the git branch is merged

equal-aqua•2y ago

btw the Neon github actions use the Neon CLI. So pretty sure you can reuse the same logic https://github.com/neondatabase/create-branch-action/blob/main/action.yml (for example here we're handling the case if a Neon branch name already exists we return it instead of an error. This way if you re-run CI it wouldn't break) https://github.com/neondatabase/delete-branch-action/blob/main/action.yaml

GitHub

create-branch-action/action.yml at main · neondatabase/create-branc...

GitHub Action to create a new Neon branch. Contribute to neondatabase/create-branch-action development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

delete-branch-action/action.yaml at main · neondatabase/delete-bran...

Contribute to neondatabase/delete-branch-action development by creating an account on GitHub.

equal-aqua•2y ago

We will make sure to write a blog post of the learnings.

That would be fantastic! Also, feel free to ping me if you run into any issues. Would love to help

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

@Mahmoud is there a policy of mechanism to automatically delete branches that have not been used for X amount of time? Automating the deletion of branches when a merge is done adds some (although not much) complexity to our pipeline and does not account for edge cases (PR abandoned or rejected).

equal-aqua•2y ago

We currently don't support automatically deleting branches

adds some (although not much) complexity to our pipeline and does not account for edge cases (PR abandoned or rejected).

That's understandable. I'll share your feedback with the team

sunny-green•2y ago

Hey. Quick summary of the workflow with the Neon Vercel integration as it's touched on above: - Vercel preview build starts (what triggers it doesn't really matter) - Vercel sends a message to Neon "Hey a preview build started" - Neon creates a new branch - It's not possible to inject the DATABASE_URL into the preview build at this point, so instead: a) Neon sends a "stop the build!" message to Vercel b) Neon creates the DATABASE_URL env in Vercel c) Neon sends a "start a new build" message to Vercel This means for every preview you'll see both a ~~failed~~ cancelled build and (hopefully) a success build in Vercel. Unfortunately, it's the best we can do today. We're chatting to our friends at Vercel with the hope they can send us a "Hey a preview build is about to start soon" then give us xxx seconds to set the DATABASE_URL before the build starts.

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

Thanks @Mike J - so that failed check that I am seeing is Neon telling Vercel to stop the build? If so, the "stop the build" commands has the side effect of noticing the CLI that de deployment failed, ergo this will break any CI/CD that uses the Vercel CLI.

sunny-green•2y ago

I think it could be. Noting Vercel dashboard has a status "cancelled" that's distinct from "error".

sunny-green•2y ago

On the topic of unused or stale branches … it's not awesome but you could run a periodic job that used Neon's API to iterate over your project's branches and check all the following are true: 1. The branch has a naming convention you recognie (e.g. it's name starts preview/pr). 2. The branch has only one compute endpoint. 3. The last_active value on the endpoint is older than xxx days. If all true, delete the branch. https://api-docs.neon.tech/reference/getprojectendpoint

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

Thanks @Mike J . We manually integrated Neon into our CI/CD (Circle CI deploying to vercel) using the Neon cli. It was relatively strightfoward. However - FWIW, the behavior you describe is different than what we observed. So we may have ran into another issue with the native integrarion. We never saw a cancelled deployment, all we saw was a check done by the Neon integration that was failing. Here are some screenshot:

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

I hope this helps. Regards

sunny-green•2y ago

Thanks for the info. We've identified an issue with the Vercel integration and Neon org accounts. That should be resolved within the next few hours; it may be the cause if you are an org user. If the problem continues, please do raise a support ticket so we can dig in deeper.

deep-jadeOP•2y ago

We are an org user. I am glad we were able to help, we love your product!

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Vercel deployments are failing due to Neon Branching check

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