**make-deploy** was initially hosted at https://git.dnix.de/an/make-deploy. Since it has become heavily used at chefkoch.de for system deployments, and lots of code is committed there, we moved the repo to https://git.chefkoch.net/pub/make-deploy. A mirror still exists at https://git.dnix.de/mirror/make-deploy.
By setting `DEPLOY_CONFIG_OVERRIDE`, an alternative config can be loaded to override existing configuration settings. This is useful in script calling make deploy or in a `.gitlab-ci.yml` in order to control settings for different targets.
**make-deploy** lets you deploy software on the commandline with make.
Doing as much config as you can in `config.mk`, via `DEPLOY_OVERRIDE_CONFIG` and in `secrets.mk` will keep this ability intact without depending on complex build systems (e.g. Gitlab deployments controlled by .gitlab-ci.yml and other stuff like that). OTOH it does not stop you from doing this: simply call `make deploy` in your build pipeline in order to get the best of both worlds.
Relying only on GNU Make and simple CLI tools makes deployments robust and still possible, when big parts of your infrastructure are broken and have to be redeployed.
### Working principle
**make-deploy** calls several stages in the deployment process, which are `mandatory prepare build test upload pre-deploy pre-local pull start post-local post-deploy reload`.
`mandatory`: Checks if all needed variables are set in config.mk.