includeactivate

Includeactivate is a term used in software deployment and configuration management to describe a control mechanism that determines whether a deployment process should also perform the activation step for new code, services, or features. Activation typically involves enabling services, applying feature flags, updating routing, or activating licenses after the artifact has been installed.

In practice, includeactivate can be implemented as a boolean flag in a deployment command, an API parameter, or a configuration setting. When enabled, the workflow proceeds to activation immediately after installation. When disabled, activation is deferred, allowing for review, testing, or staged rollout before traffic is directed to the new version.

Usage examples appear in various tooling: a command line interface might offer a flag such as --includeactivate to both deploy and activate in one pass; a CI/CD pipeline may set includeactivate: true in its step configuration to trigger immediate activation upon successful build. The exact semantics can vary by platform, but the core idea is to couple installation with activation when desired.

Considerations include the potential impact on live services, data migrations, and compatibility with existing configurations. Many teams prefer deferring activation for staging, canary, or blue-green strategies, and use feature flags to control exposure. A robust approach includes clear rollback plans and monitoring to detect issues arising from activation.

Related concepts include feature flags, canary deployments, blue-green deployments, and deployment automation.