How to correctly deploy changes after pairing Google Cloud Run with Firebase Hosting

Question

I just dockerized my Angular Universal application and created a Google Cloud Run service with the created docker image to render the HTML on the server. Furthermore, since it was a Firebase project already using Firebase Hosting, I paired Cloud Run with Firebase Hosting (see ref. https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/cloud-run?hl=en).

1) create Dockerfile in root:

Dockerfile:

FROM node:14
WORKDIR usr/src/app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm install
# Copy local angular/nest code to the container
COPY . .
# Build development app
RUN npm run build:ssr
CMD ["npm", "run", "serve:ssr"]

2) Add docker container to Google Container Registry

gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT_ID/CONTAINER_NAME --timeout=1200

3) Create Cloud Run service with the new container

gcloud beta run deploy --image gcr.io/PROJECT_ID/CONTAINER_NAME

4) Update firebase.json to pair Hosting with Cloud Run

firebase.json:

"hosting": {
  // ...

  // Add the "rewrites" attribute within "hosting"
  "rewrites": [ {
    "source": "**",
    "run": {
      "serviceId": "SERVICE_NAME",  // "service name" (from when you deployed the container image)
      "region": "europe-west3"      // optional (if omitted, default is us-central1)
    }
  } ]
}

Following this guide, I managed to make it work as expected. However, now I´m confused on how to properly deploy code changes in the future. Before Cloud Run, I just ran firebase deploy --only hosting to push the changes onto the static server. I´m new to docker and containers, but now it seems like I have to deploy every code change to Firebase Hosting and additionally to Cloud Run (and also probably create a new container for every little change before?).

Answer 1

Your source are now in the container. If you need to redeploy your sources, repackage the container and deploy it again.

But, you can also do differently. If you have static sources, you can host them directly on Firebase hosting. It's recommended to host only the backend on Cloud Run. You can play with the source parameter and to route only the backend URL to a Cloud Run container. (don't forget to set up the CORS because the Cloud Run URL and the Firebase URL won't be the same!)