Getting Started
A quick start on creating a Spacelift account, linking it to a VCS, and creating your first Spacelift stack.
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A quick start on creating a Spacelift account, linking it to a VCS, and creating your first Spacelift stack.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Hello and welcome to Spacelift! In this guide we will briefly introduce some key concepts that you need to know to work with Spacelift. These concepts will be followed by to help you create and configure your first run with Spacelift.
A stack is a central entity in Spacelift. It connects with your source control repository and manages the state of infrastructure. It facilitates integration with cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and other important Spacelift components. You can learn more about Stacks in Spacelift .
State can be managed by your backend, or for Terraform projects - can be imported into Spacelift. It is not required to let Spacelift manage your infrastructure state.
Spacelift provides two options for managing the underly compute used by Spacelift: public or private worker pools. Public worker pools are managed by Spacelift whereas private pools are hosted by you. Due to security and compliance requirements, several of our customers choose private pools to manage their infrastructure. You can learn more about worker pools .
Spacelift policies provide a way to express rules as code, rules that manage your Infrastructure as Code (IaC) environment, and help make common decisions such as login, access, and execution. Policies are based on the project and can be defined using its rule language Rego. You can learn more about policies .
Spacelift provides native integration with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (GCP). Integration with other cloud providers is also possible via programmatic connection with their identity services. You can learn more about in Spacelift detailed documentation.
Select from the options available to create your Spacelift account:
Now login to the Spacelift console, you are ready to create your first stack!
This sub-section is intended for users who created their Spacelift account using Google or GitLab.
Click on the Add Stack button.
In the Integrate VCS tab, choose your VCS provider, select the repository that you gave access to Spacelift in the first step and select a branch that you want to be attached with your Stack. Click Continue.
Click on Continue to configure the backend.
Choose Terraform as your backend with a supported version. Leave the default option to let Spacelift manage state for this stack.
Leave the default options checked for Define Behavior and click Continue.
Give your stack a name and click Save Stack.
After saving your stacks, you will be redirected to the Runs screen for the stack you just created. Click on Trigger to kick start a Spacelift run that will check out the source code, run terraform commands on it and then present you with an option to apply (confirm) these changes.
After clicking Trigger, you will be taken directly into the run. Click on Confirm and your changes will be applied. Your output will look different based on your code repository and the resources it creates.
Spacelift deeply integrates with your Version Control System (VCS). Pull requests are evaluated by Spacelift to provide a preview of the changes being made to infrastructure; these changes are deployed automatically when PRs are merged. You can learn more about here.
This section provides step-by-step instructions to help you set up and get the most out of Spacelift. If you want to learn about core concepts, please have a look at the section.
You can get started with either forking our Terraform Starter repository and testing all Spacelift capabilities in under 15 minutes or you can explore Spacelift on your own by adding your own repository and going from zero to fully managing your cloud resources.
On the , click on the "Get started" button:
In this section we will be connecting GitHub as our VCS. You can find more information about other supported VCS providers .
If you created your Spacelift account using GitHub, see please follow the "" sub-section. If you created your account using Google or GitLab, please see the "" sub-section.
if you have not already installed it.
Please select any of your GitHub repositories that create local resources (we will not be integrating with any cloud providers to keep this guide simple and quick). If you do not have a GitHub repository of this kind, you can fork our (Make sure to allow the installed GitHub app access to the forked repository).
To connect GitHub as your VCS, follow the guide for .
Please select any of your GitHub repositories that create local resources (we will not be integrating with any cloud providers to keep this guide simple and quick). If you do not have a GitHub repository of this kind, you can fork our (Make sure to allow the installed GitHub app access to the forked repository).
Please refer to the section of the documentation to connect a different VCS.
Congratulation! You've just created your first Spacelift stack and completed your first deployment!
Learn how to as a cloud provider for your infrastructure
Try with stacks for common use cases
Using and with stacks
