Close Additional Files

The close additional files feature allows you to specify additional files that should be closed as part of a deployment. these files will not be modified, but they will be closed at the beginning of the deployment and reopened once all of processes in the deployment are completed. If a deployment fails, these files will still reopen at the end.

In OttoDeploy, you can select the list of files to close by toggling the close additional files setting in the "Additional Options" section of a deployment.

Why?

During a deployment, files that are on the destination server that are part of the deployment will be closed automatically. However if there are additional files on the server that might have external file references to the files being deployed, then these files will not be closed.

This presents at least two problems:

• Users may inadvertently open the related files which will then try to open the files being deployed. As these files are closed they will not be available and the user will get an error.
• Server side scripts may do the same thing. They may try to pull open files that are closed as part of the deployment; again leading to an error.

How to prevent this

You can teach the deployment about other files that should be closed as part of the deployment by selecting them in the close additional files setting (see above). If a file in question fails to close, the entire deployment will abort.

Encrypted Files

If a file you're closing here is encrypted, OttoDeploy shows an "Add Key" (or "Edit Key") option so the file can be reopened once the deployment finishes.

If you don't provide a key for an encrypted file, it falls back to the sub-deployment's default destination encryption key. If an encrypted file is set to close with no key available at all, the deployment is blocked — unless you've turned on Keep Files Closed, in which case the file is left closed and no key is needed.