Shipping Ghost

Ghost treats main as always green and working, so Admin and server changes must remain compatible without assuming they ship together as we move towards continuous delivery.

At a glance

Track	Current cadence
Admin (Pro only)	Every commit to main after its Admin release-path checks pass
Portal and other public apps	When the app changes on main
Admin + Server (Public Release)	Weekly on Tuesdays
Admin + Server (Docker Official Image)	Follows public release after Docker team review
Server (Pro only)	Daily rollout on weekdays

Admin

Admin on Ghost(Pro) uses continuous delivery. Every commit to main publishes a new Admin build and makes it live after its Admin build and Docker release-path checks pass.

The public Ghost release contains a Ghost Admin build to keep self-hosted installs easy to manage.

Public apps

These public apps are npm packages served through jsDelivr:

• @tryghost/portal
• @tryghost/sodo-search
• @tryghost/comments-ui
• @tryghost/signup-form
• @tryghost/announcement-bar
• @tryghost/admin-toolbar

The full list lives in scripts/public-apps.json. When one changes on main, CI publishes a new patch version to npm and clears the jsDelivr cache. Sites load the latest patch in the major/minor line configured by Ghost, so a patch can go live without a Ghost release.

A minor or major app release is different. It changes the major/minor version pinned by Ghost. The new line becomes the default when that change is included in a public Ghost release and the site upgrades. See the app's README for that release process.

Public Ghost releases

An automated workflow releases a new public Ghost version every Tuesday.

A version tag starts the release jobs in ci.yml. CI:

• builds and tests the Ghost package with Ghost-CLI
• publishes that package to npm
• creates the GitHub release and release notes
• starts the Docker Official Image update

For a normal ghost install or ghost update, Ghost-CLI downloads the ghost package from npm and checks its published checksum. It does not use the source ZIP generated by GitHub.

Ghost-CLI also accepts a local .zip, .tgz, or .tar.gz through its --archive option. This is useful for testing a CI build, but it is not the normal release path.

Docker Official Image

After the npm package is published:

1. TryGhost/docker-library-ghost updates its Dockerfiles for the new Ghost and Ghost-CLI versions.
2. Automation opens a pull request in docker-library/official-images.
3. A Docker Official Images maintainer must approve and merge the pull request.
4. Docker builds and publishes the official ghost images on Docker Hub.

The approval must come from the Docker team, not the Ghost team. This means the Docker image can appear later than the npm and GitHub release.

Ghost(Pro) Server

In an effort to move continuous delivery beyond Admin, we currently roll out the latest Ghost server to Ghost(Pro) daily on weekdays.

We're investigating adding a public "nightly" build in the near future.