Do your Previews take a long time to build? Some things, like importing large assets, are going to take time - but there are some things you can do to speed up your Preview builds:
The big value of using a Base Preview is that you can front-load the work into a time-consuming Preview you only have to build once, and then use that as a base to iterate on with smaller, faster-building Previews.
You can do this by using Service Commands in
the init stage of the Preview build to do the resource-intensive, time-intensive processes - and then
set that as your Base Preview so you don’t have to complete those
steps in every single build. This is the perfect time to install a large database that you won’t have to update in
subsequent Previews, or download and configure the host of services in your Preview.
If you’re updating large assets as part of the update stage of your Tugboat build, you can configure Tugboat to
automatically refresh your Base Preview
while your crew isn’t working. By default, Tugboat automatically refreshes Base Previews daily at 12am UTC. You can set
this for a time and frequency that works best for your team, and then you won’t have to manually update your Base
Preview when you’re about to test an important build - it will already have the latest database, or any large assets you
need, whenever you’re ready.
If you want to make your Previews smaller, there are a couple of tricks you can use to reduce Preview size:
Looking for more info about Preview size? Check out: Preview size explained
In addition to speeding up Preview builds, Base Previews can help you dramatically reduce the size of Previews built from that Base Preview. This is because the Base Preview contains everything Tugboat needs to run your Preview, while subsequent Previews only contain the differences between the Base Preview and the new Preview build.
In practice, this means that a Base Preview might be 3GB in size, but subsequent Previews might be only 100MB.
Ready to set up a Base Preview? Check out: How to set a Base Preview.
Are you pulling in a large production database? You can save Preview space - and speed up your Preview builds at the same time - by switching to a small dummy database that contains enough data for testing, but doesn’t mirror your large production behemoth.
Sometimes, speeding up your Preview builds might involve having a second set of eyes take a look at your Config file and
make recommendations to help you optimize it. This might include something like running a command in init instead of
update, or scripting a few commands. The team at Tugboat is happy to help; our Support page can direct
you to our Tugboat support Slack, or an email address where you can reach us.
If it’s not a question of optimizing your Config file - for example, if you’re building a complex or resource-intensive sequence of code in every Tugboat Preview - you might want to consider upgrading your Tugboat Project to a higher-performance tier. A higher-performance tier gives you more CPU power and RAM to build your Previews, which can mildly or dramatically speed up your build times. When build times matter, keep this option in mind.