[wtetzner]

That's a false dilemma. There are more options than "edit code on running server" and "use a 16-step verifiable app deployment pipeline".

For example: update the code in your source control repository, and then build the new version of the software.

[toomuchtodo]

> That's a false dilemma

It's not, and that's coming from someone who does devops for thousands of virtual machines in production. I don't have an hour to burn sometimes to update a repo, build new AMIs, roll them into production, roll the old ones out, watch logs to ensure canaries pass acceptance tests and that production traffic to new instances aren't erring out, all for minor changes (example: nginx mime type change).

[seanwilson]

Try something like Heroku. Commit the code to Git, push the repo to the Heroku repo and it deploys it to the servers for you. Easy.

[toomuchtodo]

You mean the same Heroku that has the uptime of a server under the dev's desk? No thank you.

[adrianpike]

Or, since we're talking about adding tooling for better efficiency - just update the source code, and let the tooling build and deploy! :)

Automatic (and safe, obviously) production cutover is still kind of a holy grail, but it's definitely doable, and being done as we speak by a number of pretty neat companies.