Top all-time · #1997
Octopus Deploy
Company blog · octopus.com/blogprogrammingbusiness
Octopus Deploy is the company blog at octopus.com, writing about programming and business. Since 2015, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “The state of config file formats: XML vs. YAML vs. JSON vs. HCL”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Octopus Deploy's blog as a reference on deployment practice, config file formats, PowerShell exit codes and database deployment. Most links are cited as sources for the commenter's own point.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Deploy software to multi-cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments with Octopus Deploy, the continuous deployment software. Save 2000 hours per rollout, ensure reliable deployments, and automate routine tasks.
Most-linked posts?
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-12-08
- The state of config file formats: XML vs. YAML vs. JSON vs. HCL3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-10-16
- Octopus Deploy – Release, deploy and operations platform for teams3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-04
- Lessons learned porting Octopus Server to .NET Core 3.12 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-03-19
- The DevOps Reading List2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-24
- Database Migrations Lessons Learned2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-21
What Hacker News says?
We put an explanation here (hope it's OK to post the link): https://octopus.com/blog/build-your-binaries-once A real world example of this is that when .NET 4.5 shipped, the compilers in .NET 4.5 for 4.0 code produced different output than the .NET 4.0 compilers would have. So installing a system-level update on Windows on a build server would mean Test and Production got different results: http://blog.marcgravell.c…
Comment linking /blog/build-your-binaries-once
on “How to Deploy Software”Submitted The DevOps Engineer's Handbook as a story · 178 points
HN discussionOctopusDeploy selected HCL for its pipeline config as code. https://octopus.com/blog/state-of-config-file-formats
Comment linking /blog/state-of-config-file-formats
on “Nomad vs. Kubernetes”Submitted MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on our launch as a story · 94 points
HN discussionhttps://octopus.com/blog/insight-investment I would say they will be.
Comment linking /blog/insight-investment
on “Kubernetes is a red flag signalling premature optimisation”Submitted Octopus Deploy Acquires Codefresh as a story · 9 points
HN discussionIf you like that, you'll love working with PowerShell's exit codes. [1] [2] [3] [1] https://weblogs.asp.net/soever/returning-an-exit-code-from-a... [2] https://octopus.com/blog/powershell-exit-codes [3] https://community.idera.com/database-tools/powershell/powert...
Comment linking /blog/powershell-exit-codes
on “Minimal safe Bash script template”Submitted Octopus Starter edition: Free for small teams as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> gone back to doing releases by hand. Did you try Octopus Deploy (1) or Deployment Cockpit (2) [1] https://octopus.com [2] http://deploymentcockpit.com
Comment linking /
on “Stack Overflow: How We Do Deployment”Submitted Lessons learned porting Octopus Server to .NET Core 3.1 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOctopus Deploy | Full Stack & Front-End Software Engineers | Australia | Full-Time | Remote Our back-end is C#, .NET Core, our front-end is React with TypeScript Read all about it at https://octopus.com/company/careers
Comment linking /company/careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2020)”Submitted The Productivity Delusion as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWe have https://octopus.com , which is on the list. And first registered the year I was born. Has an interesting history: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2011/d2011... > Respondent Yana Beklova, who at one stage worked for the Complainant, requested an amount between USD 500,000 and USD 1,000,000 for the transfer of the disputed domain name, that the registrant of the disputed domain name sought to…
Comment linking /
on “Oldest domains in the .com, .net, and .org TLDs”Submitted DevOps uses a capability model, not a maturity model as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWe use dbup[0]. Its philosophy[1] is that you should treat your DB changes like code changes in source control, and only perform up migrations. I agree with this. We previously spent a lot of time and effort writing down migrations that were never, ever used. If you need a down migration, take a backup before running your up migrations. We're a C# shop. Our DB migration scripts are simply named with a datestamp and…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How does your development team handle database migrations?”Submitted Changes to Octopus Server and Cloud Pricing as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTypically informational messages/log message. Ideally yes logging should go to stderr but some applications that intercept the file descriptors consider anything to stderr as error and it is not always possible to change the handling for those applications. E.g. Octopus Deploy[0] does this: it doesn't outright fail the step assuming other "successful" steps happen after that but if the last command writes to stderr,…
Comment linking /
on “Bringing the Unix philosophy to the 21st century (2019)”Submitted Octopus Deploy – Release, deploy and operations platform for teams as a story · 4 points
HN discussionGlancing through this looks like a good starting point. Their reading list seems solid: https://octopus.com/devops/reading-list/ Google's SRE book changed my career, although I know it's a little out of date now, it's well worth reading for the concepts involved, IMO. This though: > With DevOps, if you can automate it, you should automate it. Everyone at some level in this field understands this. I would even go far…
Comment linking /devops/reading-list/
on “The DevOps Engineer's Handbook”Submitted Why we chose React over Angular when rewriting the Octopus 4.0 UI as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTheir pricing is indeed extremely overpriced, particularly their self-hosted pricing. 10 targets - free 25 targets - $2300/year 50 targets - $4500/year 100 targets - $8800/year 200 targets - $16800/year 400 targets - $32000/year 500 targets - $39000/year . . . 5000 targets - $290000/year inf targets - $420000/year https://octopus.com/pricing/overview
Comment linking /pricing/overview
on “Why We Terminated Our Partnership with Microsoft”Submitted The state of config file formats: XML vs. YAML vs. JSON vs. HCL as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's good English, but it's not transparent as to what future costs I might encounter if I start using the product while it's in beta, and want to continue using it in the future. I'm happy to pay to use good software, but it's better to know the pricing plan in advance. I think that https://octopus.com/purchase provides a good example: > Community edition is free for small teams, even for commercial use. It allows…
Comment linking /purchase
on “A note-taking app for technical teams”Submitted The DevOps Reading List as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's true. YAML is a superset of JSON[1]. I agree that it is surprising (in a bad way) and makes no sense. 1. https://octopus.com/blog/state-of-config-file-formats#:~:tex... .
Comment linking /blog/state-of-config-file-formats
on “No YAML”Submitted Command-line tab completion for Octopus CLI as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI do too, and it doesn't hurt that usually good communication has equaled a very good product or service. Some companies which have particularly impressed me with their onboarding communications are Survata (a YC company, https://www.survata.com/ ), and Octopus Deploy ( https://octopus.com/ )
Comment linking /
on “Talking to users”Submitted Automatic rollbacks are a last resort as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is a nice article from the folks at Octopus Deploy on how to solve this problem with their RunBooks feature: https://octopus.com/blog/database-deployment-automation-adho...
Comment linking /blog/database-deployment-automation-adhoc-scripts-with-runbooks
on “Ask HN: How do you manage direct updates to databases in a production system”Submitted Octopus Server and Cloud pricing model change as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
