Tugboat / CMS not picking up changes for vets-website on a content release

[randimays]

Description

When I create a Tugboat, go to its CMS, and Release content with a specific content-build and vets-website branch created, I do not see the changes on the vets-website branch.

Example Tugboat: https://tugboat.vfs.va.gov/6657427f17e38363d33f18eb

Related PR: department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website#28812

Web view for this Tugboat after the content release for the vets-website branch: https://web-luqe8lbtaxvgujvwf6rw4qgehzg6tugm.demo.cms.va.gov/search/

Content release build logs: https://cms-luqe8lbtaxvgujvwf6rw4qgehzg6tugm.demo.cms.va.gov/sites/default/files/build.txt

How to verify that it's not working as expected

The PR linked above changed the links in the Web view under "More VA search tools" to use the design system web component for the links.

This is how the DOM for these links looks when the code is run locally:

This is how the DOM looks on the Tugboat (where the changes are not being picked up):

This has been happening to me since the content release for vets-website became available. I have never been able to see vets-website changes reflected in a Tugboat.

Prior work to enable vets-website branch builds on Tugboat

• Allow users to select a vets-website branch with which to build tugboat previews #6434
  • VACMS-6434: Vets-website content release integration #15523
  • https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-cms/pull/15620/files

Related next-build work

When the original AP team tried to also add next-build branch picker to the Tugboat content release UI, the work had to be rolled back due to limitations of which Node version can be used on Amazon devops resources. Tim mentioned this, so noting it. Unclear if this is connected to the vets-website branches not working.

• Next Build and Vets Website branches can be chosen on Tugboat #16853
  • VACMS-16853: next build branches ftw #17154
  • https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/devops/pull/14068 - merged and later reverted because BRD amazonlinux doesn't support node 18
  • https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/devops/pull/14070 - the fix that will need to roll forward when Amazon can support node 18

ACs

• A Drupal admin user can select a vets-website branch in Content Release settings. After web build, the vets-website code changes should be visible in the Tugboat web FE build

[jilladams]

@gracekretschmer-metrostar FYI Sitewide likely needs to bump up priority on this. This is affecting our ability to effectively preview VBA Regional Offices before our Front-end launch.

For context:

• We can't preview ROs in Staging, because that requires publishing content in prod
• We can't preview ROs on Preview servers, bc the Preview Server isn't able to process entity relationships / only displays partial content
• We can't preview ROs on vets-website Review Instances, because they don't have an accompanying CMS, so also require published content in Prod

So Tugboats are the only place we can preview:

• Published content that shouldn't yet be published on Prod
• Content-build templates that are in main
• Vets-website styles and JS

Our vets-website changes are merged to main, so we don't need specific branch capabilities. But we do need Tugboat to serve up vets-website main properly.

We are scheduled for a Staging Review of ROs on July 2 and plannign for Governance team to review our work in Tugboat. Right now Tugboat can't effectively display the state of our work though. 😬

cc @EWashb @Agile6MSkinner @mmiddaugh for awareness

[jilladams]

Related recent thread with some examples of what we're seeing: https://dsva.slack.com/archives/C0FQSS30V/p1718987566280199

[jilladams]

Follow up: we figured out that when a Tugboat initially builds, or when you run Content Relase within Drupal using the Default setting, it may not grab the actual latest state of main for content-build / vets-website. To get that working correctly, in Content Release, you have to "select a different branch" for each repo, and specify main. Then it'll build with main.

I think it's still true that Tugboat isn't able to successfully grab the state of any alternate branch besides main for vets-website.

But anyway: our Staging Review for VBA is unblocked since we got main to build correctly.

[gracekretschmer-metrostar]

Raising as a potential ticket for Q4.

[jilladams]

Factoring into the conversation: Tugboat pulls the state of vets-website from dev: https://dsva.slack.com/archives/CT4GZBM8F/p1733769243270769?thread_ts=1733532693.315139&cid=CT4GZBM8F

OK. So, in terms of a CMS Tugboat's "content-build" web instance - i.e. something like this one: https://web-h5ubpjxulma3zyqeq8hayikh80scnqhu.ci.cms.va.gov/
That pulls vets-website 'assets', including Javascript & React components, from vets-website dev, which is at this domain: https://dev-va-gov-assets.s3-us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/generated/web-components.entry.js
That populates when a vets-website Continuous Integration run on main branch is successful.

So currently, in order for a vets-website commit to show up on Tugboat:

1. Commit must merge to main
2. Commit must get deployed to dev
3. Tugboat runs a new content release, specifying branch = main

Then it appears.