Question

Automatic redeployments continue to run in GitHub Actions despite being completed in DigitalOcean

I am trying to use the digitalocean/app_action/deploy@v2 GitHub Action to automate the deployment of our development environment whenever a new image is pushed to our GitHub Container Registry.

Before I used the action I would have to manually go to the App Platform project and select Actions > Deploy. It would then grab the most recent development tag for the image and re-deploy it. This always worked and hasn’t caused us any issues.

I began using the digitalocean/app_action/deploy@v2 GitHub Action and had this step added after the image was pushed to the GitHub Container Registry:

  deploy_to_development:
    name: Deployment to DigitalOcean App Platform development environment
    needs: [release_management, push_to_registry]
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to DigitalOcean App Platform (development)
        uses: digitalocean/app_action/deploy@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN }}
          project_id: ${{ vars.DIGITALOCEAN_PROJECT_ID }}
          app_name: ${{ vars.DIGITALOCEAN_APP_NAME }}

It would run and start returning the following log statements:

app "_______" already exists, updating...
wait for deployment to finish
deployment is in phase: PENDING_BUILD
deployment is in phase: BUILDING
deployment is in phase: DEPLOYING
deployment is in phase: ACTIVE

After the final phase, ACTIVE, the action would continue to run upwards of 5+ minutes without any changes. While it was running I went to the DigitalOcean App Platform project and verified in the activity section that the deployment was live and there was a checkmark next to both the build and deploy logs. In this past example the image was the same, so the deployment (per DigitalOcean’s logs) only took 1 second.

I didn’t want to waste our GitHub Action minutes so I would cancel it manually after 10+ minutes of running. It appears to be hanging after the deployment is done in GitHub Actions. How can I resolve this or is this an issue with DigitalOcean’s deploy action?

Show comments

Submit an answer


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
March 9, 2025

Hi there,

Yes indeed, you could try switching to doctl with apps update --update-sources, but yeah, it does require the full spec file, which makes it less ideal for small updates like image-only deployments.

Best option for now: reach out to DigitalOcean support to report the hanging behavior — or post it as an issue on the GitHub repository to help improve the GitHub Action UX.

- Bobby

Become a contributor for community

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

DigitalOcean Documentation

Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.

Resources for startups and SMBs

The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.

Get our newsletter

Stay up to date by signing up for DigitalOcean’s Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

New accounts only. By submitting your email you agree to our Privacy Policy

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.