start

March 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

Brings up stopped or exited DevLake services for an existing deployment.

Usage

gh devlake start [flags]

Auto-detects deployment type from state files in the current directory.

Flags

FlagDefaultDescription
--service <name>(all)Start only a specific service (e.g., config-ui)
--no-waitfalseSkip health polling after start
--localfalseForce local (Docker Compose) start mode
--azurefalseForce Azure start mode
--state-file <path>(auto-detected)Path to state file

Auto-Detection

Without --local or --azure, the command checks:

  1. --state-file path (if provided)
  2. .devlake-azure.json → Azure mode
  3. .devlake-local.json → Local mode
  4. docker-compose.yml in current directory → Local mode

If no deployment is detected, an error is returned — use gh devlake deploy to create a new deployment.

Local Deployments (Docker Compose)

Runs docker compose up -d from the current directory. This is idempotent:

  • Running containers are unaffected
  • Stopped containers are started
  • Crashed or exited containers are restarted
gh devlake start
gh devlake start --service config-ui
gh devlake start --no-wait

What it does:

  1. Checks Docker availability
  2. Runs docker compose up -d (with optional service filter)
  3. Polls the backend /ping endpoint until healthy (up to 60s)
  4. Prints service URLs

Shorter health timeout: start uses a 60-second health timeout (vs 6 minutes for deploy) because databases and volumes are already initialized.

Azure Deployments (Container Instances)

Reads container names and resource group from .devlake-azure.json and starts any stopped resources.

gh devlake start --azure
gh devlake start --azure --service backend

What it does:

  1. Reads resource group and container names from .devlake-azure.json
  2. Checks Azure CLI login
  3. Starts the MySQL flexible server (if present)
  4. Starts each Container Instance via az container start
  5. Polls the backend endpoint until healthy (up to 60s)
  6. Prints endpoints

JSON Output

gh devlake start --json

Returns:

{"status": "started", "mode": "local"}

Examples

# Auto-detect and start all services
gh devlake start

# Start only config-ui (local)
gh devlake start --service config-ui

# Start without waiting for health check
gh devlake start --no-wait

# Force Azure mode
gh devlake start --azure

# Use a specific state file
gh devlake start --state-file /path/to/.devlake-azure.json

Motivating Scenario

After a machine reboot, gh devlake status shows ❌ for one or more services. Instead of manually finding the docker-compose directory and running raw Docker commands, run:

gh devlake start