Aptible will be deprecating Companion Git Repositories starting today, September 15th. Customers will have until November 3rd, 2025 to migrate.

What is a Companion Git Repository, and why is it being removed?

Initially, Aptible supported deploying applications only via Git: customers provided a Dockerfile, and the platform built the app image. In June 2017, we added support for deploying pre-built Docker images. At that time, if you needed to define processes or migrations using a Procfile or .aptible.yml, those files still had to be provided via Git in addition to your image. This pattern of providing configuration files via Git is known as a Companion Git Repository. In January 2018, we added support to provide Procfiles and .aptible.yml directly within Docker Images. At that time we indicated that the Companion Git Repository was deprecated, but gave an indefinite timeline for customers to migrate. In order to continue to modernize and simplify our platform, we’re finally taking action to require customers to stop using this deprecated feature.

What impact will this have on me?

Hopefully, none! Fewer than 2% of apps hosted on Aptible use a Companion Git Repository, and even fewer include a Procfile or .aptible.yml. Since there is no functional difference in how these files are provided, migrating off the deprecated method will not affect app behavior. If you’re one of the impacted customers, we’ve already contacted your Ops Alert contact directly and provided them with a list of affected apps.

Starting today, impacted apps will fail to deploy. You can either:

• Migrate your app immediately, using the "How do I migrate?" section of our documentation

• Temporarily opt-in to continue using the feature by acknowledging the deprecation for each impacted App. See “Using Companion Git Repositories during deprecation” in the documentation here.

On November 3rd, 2025, the opt-in behavior will be removed, and you will be required to migrate any remaining Apps before deploying them again.