That's called staged changes, when you make an edit to your service config it will go into staged changes and to save the changes you need to press the deploy button.

Thanks. I am new to python and to the world of IT. I feel like sometimes I notice that stage is there, and with other changes I don't....? Or am I imagining that?

So what if it tells me that they are "destructive changes", because you know there are various levels of "destructive". On one end of the spectrum is removing a few lines of code that the machine thinks is necessary, but isn't, on the other end is taking down the internet and infecting everyone with a virus and Keifer Sutherland is called in to save the president and people need to move to the country and grow potatoes...know what I mean? it's a very broad word, how seriously do I need to take that? In this case I typed in "apply destructive changes", and everything was fine.

If you are unsure what changes you are applying destructive or not, simply click the details button and it will show you everything you are changing in Railway.

but quite feasibly, the system can be wrong about that? I just wonder how accurate people percieve that to be here, or what triggers it

In my entire time using Railway, I have not seen the staged changes be wrong on what changes are being staged.

hmmm, ok

Respectfully, you may be overthinking this, simply put, you make a change in your project and those changes will be staged, updating a variable, deleting a service, etc. then to apply them you click deploy.

But when you push changes, it calculates them all and then it says "deployed", and that happens without pushing that button, like it does something without that. So Im wondering, what its doing, like what version of the project will be running if I dont push deploy? It just feels like its already made the changes? or its jjust done the calcs and its still the old verison running?

well it might not say "deployed", but something is clearly happening

I think you are confusing staged changes with just pushing new code to GitHub?

sure, but when you push to github, it seems to push to here aswell, and then it runs again

well, it appears to start the containers again and all that, so Im wondering what it is starting

That is correct, Railway will automatically deploy when you push to GitHub, this behavior has nothing to do with staged changes.

so do I assume that after I deploy to github, and then railway does its thing, that it is still running on the old version.....even though its clearly done something with my new vrsion....?

i guess that's it

After the new deployment is done, the new code is running.

what after I push the button? or after i push to github?

The same code would be ran, just with the updates you have made (like a new variable or different start command)

this feels like something so fundamental, and I dont understand it. I dont understand what has happened after I push from github to railway, or has not happened, and what then happens after I click the button

and being so fundamental, I wonder if it is clearly explained somewhere, or everyone just knows this and the documentation will be too much for me.....i guess I should try and find it

Push to GitHub: a container is built and ran with the new code.
Push Deploy button: The same code is built and ran with the changes made in the dashboard.

Start here - https://docs.railway.app/guides/build-configuration

More reading -

https://docs.railway.app/guides/github-autodeploys

https://docs.railway.app/reference/deployments

https://docs.railway.app/reference/nixpacks

thanks

So nothing there says anything about me clicking a deploy changes button.

The second link says that it just cycles through the stages after detecting changes in github, there isn't mention, that I can see, of involvement from me. And that is what I notice most of the time.

what I would like to see, is documentation for the "deploy changes" button.....do you have that?

i found it...