Lightsail Deployer

Composite GitHub Action for deploying a project to AWS Lightsail via SSH/rsync. Optimized for small PHP/WordPress apps, but generic enough for static and Node stacks.

Author: James Bregenzer — Full‑Stack Developer · https://jamesbregenzer.com
License: MIT

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Quick start

1. Add repo secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret):

   • AWS_HOST — Lightsail public IP or hostname
   • AWS_USER — SSH user (e.g., ubuntu)
   • AWS_KEY — private key contents (PEM)
   • DEPLOY_PATH — absolute path on server (e.g., /var/www/html/app)

2. Use the example workflow from .github/workflows/deploy.yml (below). Start with dry-run: true.

3. Push to main or run via workflow_dispatch to deploy.

Example workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yml)

name: Deploy to Lightsail

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      dry-run:
        description: "Simulate without uploading"
        type: boolean
        default: true
  push:
    branches: ["main"]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup SSH key
        run: |
          echo "${{ secrets.AWS_KEY }}" > key.pem
          chmod 600 key.pem

      - name: Deploy via rsync
        uses: ./.github/actions/lightsail-deployer
        with:
          host: ${{ secrets.AWS_HOST }}
          user: ${{ secrets.AWS_USER }}
          key: key.pem
          path: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_PATH }}
          source: ./
          dry-run: ${{ github.event.inputs.dry-run || 'false' }}
          exclude: |
            .git
            .github
            node_modules
            vendor
            *.log

Inputs

Name	Required	Default	Description
host	yes	—	Server host/IP
user	yes	—	SSH username
key	yes	—	Path to private key file on runner
path	yes	—	Remote destination path
source	no	./	Local source path
dry-run	no	false	Pass --dry-run to rsync
exclude	no	—	Newline-delimited exclude globs

Notes & tips

• Uses rsync -az --delete with SSH. Adjust flags for your stack.
• For zero downtime deploys: sync to a releases/ dir and atomically switch a current symlink.
• Consider composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader either on CI or as a remote post‑deploy.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.