Acquia Cloud Hooks

Automated deployment hooks for Acquia Cloud Platform. These hooks run in response to code deployments and commits, handling Drupal deployment steps and Varnish cache clearing. The post-code-deploy hook also handles database/file synchronization.

How It Works

Acquia Cloud Hooks are shell scripts that Acquia automatically executes when certain events occur in your environment. This package provides two hooks with different responsibilities:

Hook	Trigger	Script
post-code-deploy	A tag or branch is deployed to an environment	common/post-code-deploy/build.sh
post-code-update	A commit is pushed to a branch currently deployed to an environment	common/post-code-update/build.sh

What Each Hook Does

Both hooks share these steps:

1. Skip the RA environment — the Release Agent environment is always bypassed.
2. Check for a skipbuild file — if present, exits immediately (see below).
3. Authenticate with the Acquia Cloud API via ACLI.
4. Run deployment commands via helper/deploy.sh (or a custom script if one exists).
5. Clear Varnish caches for all active domains in the environment.

post-code-deploy only

In addition to the shared steps, post-code-deploy also syncs data from the canonical environment (default: prod):

• On non-canonical environments: copies the database and files from prod (runs concurrently).
• On the canonical environment: creates a database backup before deploying.

Default Deploy Script

helper/deploy.sh runs the standard Drupal deployment sequence:

drush updatedb
drush cache-rebuild
drush config-import
drush config-import  (second pass)
drush cache-rebuild

Custom Deploy Script

To override the default deploy steps, create scripts/custom/deploy.sh in your project root. If this file exists, it will be called instead of helper/deploy.sh.

Setup

1. Install via Composer

composer require fourkitchens/acquia-cloud-hooks

2. Configure API Credentials

For each environment, create a bashkeys.sh file at the private file path:

/mnt/gfs/home/{site}/{environment}/nobackup/bashkeys.sh

The file must export your Acquia Cloud API credentials:

export ACQUIACLI_KEY="your-api-key"
export ACQUIACLI_SECRET="your-api-secret"

Generate API tokens at: https://docs.acquia.com/cloud-platform/develop/api/auth/#cloud-generate-api-token

3. Configuration Variables

common/post-code-deploy/build.sh (data sync variables):

Variable	Default	Description
ACQUIA_CANONICAL_ENV	prod	Environment to sync database and files from
ACQUIA_DATABASE_NAME	$site	Database name to backup/copy
ACLI_MAX_TIMEOUT	600	Max seconds to wait for async API operations
ACLI_DELAY	15	Seconds between API status checks

These variables are not present in post-code-update as it does not perform data sync.

Skipping a Build

To disable automated deployment for a specific environment without removing the hook, create an empty file at:

/mnt/gfs/home/{site}/{environment}/nobackup/skipbuild

Example:

touch /mnt/gfs/home/mysite/dev/nobackup/skipbuild

When this file is detected, the hook exits immediately with a message:

The skip file was detected. You must run backups and build commands manually.

All automated steps are skipped — no database sync, no file sync, no Drush commands, no Varnish clearing. The hook exits with code 0 so the deployment itself still succeeds.

To re-enable automated builds, delete the file:

rm /mnt/gfs/home/mysite/dev/nobackup/skipbuild

When to use skipbuild: This is useful when you need to manually control a deployment — for example, when migrating data, running a complex update that requires manual steps, or temporarily disabling automation on a specific environment without affecting others.

Dependencies

• Acquia CLI (acli) — must be available at vendor/bin/acli
• Drush — must be available at vendor/bin/drush
• PHP — required for the helper scripts (helper/*.php)

Helper Scripts

Script	Purpose
helper/deploy.sh	Default Drupal deployment commands
helper/get-env-uuid.php	Retrieves an environment UUID via ACLI
helper/get-env-domains.php	Retrieves active domains for an environment
helper/wait-for-notification.php	Polls async Acquia API operations until completion