The Trigger.dev packages are now at version 3.0.x in the latest tag. This is our first official release of v3 under the latest tag, and we recommend anyone still using packages in the beta tag to upgrade to the latest version. This guide will help you upgrade your project to the latest version of Trigger.dev.

The major changes in this release are a new build system, which is more flexible and powerful than the previous build system. We’ve also made some changes to the trigger.dev CLI to improve the developer experience.

The main features of the new build sytem are:

  • Bundling by default: All dependencies are bundled by default, so you no longer need to specify which dependencies to bundle. This solves a whole bunch of issues related to monorepos.
  • Build extensions: A new way to extend the build process with custom logic. This is a more flexible and powerful way to extend the build process compared to the old system. (including custom esbuild plugin support)
  • Improved configuration: We’ve migrated to using c12 to power our configuration system.
  • Improved error handling: We now do a much better job of reporting of any errors that happen during the indexing process by loading your trigger task files dynamically.
  • Improved cold start times: Previously, we would load all your trigger task files at once, which could lead to long cold start times. Now we load your trigger task files dynamically, which should improve cold start times.

Update packages

To use the new build system, you have to update to use our latest packages. Update the @trigger.dev/sdk package in your package.json:

"@trigger.dev/sdk": "^3.0.0",

You will also need to update your usage of the trigger.dev CLI to use the latest release. If you run the CLI via npx you can update to the latest release like so:

# old way
npx [email protected] dev

# using the latest release
npx trigger.dev@latest dev

If you’ve added the trigger.dev CLI to your devDependencies, then you should update the version to point to the latest release:

"trigger.dev": "^3.0.0",

Once you do that make sure you re-install your dependencies using npm i or the equivalent with your preferred package manager.

If you deploy using GitHub actions, make sure you update the version there too.

Update your trigger.config.ts

The new build system does not effect your trigger task files at all, so those can remain unchanged. However, you may need to make changes to your trigger.config.ts file.

defineConfig

You should now import the defineConfig function from @trigger.dev/sdk/v3 and export the config as the default export:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
});

Deprecated: dependenciesToBundle

The new build system will bundle all dependencies by default, so dependenciesToBundle no longer makes any sense and can be removed.

Externals

Now that all dependencies are bundled, there are some situations where bundling a dependency doesn’t work, and needs to be made external (e.g. when a dependency includes a native module). You can now specify these dependencies as build externals in the defineConfig function:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    external: ["native-module"],
  },
});

external is an array of strings, where each string is the name of a dependency that should be made external. Glob expressions are also supported and use the minimatch matcher.

additionalFiles

The additionalFiles option has been moved to our new build extension system.

To use build extensions, you’ll need to add the @trigger.dev/build package to your devDependencies:

npm add @trigger.dev/build@latest -D

Now you can import the additionalFiles build extension and use it in your trigger.config.ts file:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { additionalFiles } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/core";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [
      additionalFiles({ files: ["wrangler/wrangler.toml", "./assets/**", "./fonts/**"] }),
    ],
  },
});

additionalPackages

The additionalPackages option has been moved to our new build extension system.

To use build extensions, you’ll need to add the @trigger.dev/build package to your devDependencies:

npm add @trigger.dev/build@latest -D

Now you can import the additionalPackages build extension and use it in your trigger.config.ts file:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { additionalPackages } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/core";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [additionalPackages({ packages: ["wrangler"] })],
  },
});

resolveEnvVars

The resolveEnvVars export has been moved to our new build extension system.

To use build extensions, you’ll need to add the @trigger.dev/build package to your devDependencies:

npm add @trigger.dev/build@latest -D

Now you can import the syncEnvVars build extension and use it in your trigger.config.ts file:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { syncEnvVars } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/core";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [
      syncEnvVars(async (params) => {
        return {
          MY_ENV_VAR: "my-value",
        };
      }),
    ],
  },
});

The syncEnvVars callback function works very similarly to the deprecated resolveEnvVars handler, but now instead of returning an object with a variables key that contains the environment variables, you return an object with the environment variables directly (see the example above).

One other difference is now params.env only contains the environment variables that are set in the Trigger.dev environment variables, and not the environment variables from the process. If you want to access the environment variables from the process, you can use process.env.

See the syncEnvVars documentation for more information.

emitDecoratorMetadata

If you make use of decorators in your code, and have enabled the emitDecoratorMetadata tsconfig compiler option, you’ll need to enable this in the new build sytem using the emitDecoratorMetadata build extension:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { emitDecoratorMetadata } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/typescript";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [emitDecoratorMetadata()],
  },
});

Prisma

We’ve created a build extension to support using Prisma in your Trigger.dev tasks. To use this extension, you’ll need to add the @trigger.dev/build package to your devDependencies:

npm add @trigger.dev/build@latest -D

Then you can import the prismaExtension build extension and use it in your trigger.config.ts file, passing in the path to your Prisma schema file:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { prismaExtension } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/prisma";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [
      prismaExtension({
        schema: "prisma/schema.prisma",
      }),
    ],
  },
});

This will make sure that your prisma client is generated during the build process when deploying to Trigger.dev.

This does not have any effect when running the dev command, so you’ll need to make sure you generate your client locally first.

If you want to also run migrations during the build process, you can pass in the migrate option:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { prismaExtension } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/prisma";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [
      prismaExtension({
        schema: "prisma/schema.prisma",
        migrate: true,
        directUrlEnvVarName: "DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED", // optional - the name of the environment variable that contains the direct database URL if you are using a direct database URL
      }),
    ],
  },
});

If you have multiple generator statements defined in your schema file, you can pass in the clientGenerator option to specify the prisma-client-js generator, which will prevent other generators from being generated:

audioWaveform

Previously, we installed Audio Waveform in the build image. That’s been moved to a build extension:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { audioWaveform } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions/audioWaveform";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [audioWaveform()], // uses verson 1.1.0 of audiowaveform by default
  },
});

esbuild plugins

You can now add esbuild plugins to customize the build process using the esbuildPlugin build extension. The example below shows how to automatically upload sourcemaps to Sentry using their esbuild plugin:

import { defineConfig } from "@trigger.dev/sdk/v3";
import { esbuildPlugin } from "@trigger.dev/build/extensions";
import { sentryEsbuildPlugin } from "@sentry/esbuild-plugin";

export default defineConfig({
  project: "<project ref>",
  build: {
    extensions: [
      esbuildPlugin(
        sentryEsbuildPlugin({
          org: process.env.SENTRY_ORG,
          project: process.env.SENTRY_PROJECT,
          authToken: process.env.SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN,
        }),
        // optional - only runs during the deploy command, and adds the plugin to the end of the list of plugins
        { placement: "last", target: "deploy" }
      ),
    ],
  },
});

Changes to the trigger.dev CLI

No more typechecking during deploy

We no longer run typechecking during the deploy command. This was causing issues with some projects, and we found that it wasn’t necessary to run typechecking during the deploy command. If you want to run typechecking before deploying to Trigger.dev, you can run the tsc command before running the deploy command.

tsc && npx trigger.dev@latest deploy

Or if you are using GitHub actions, you can add an additional step to run the tsc command before deploying to Trigger.dev.

- name: Install dependencies
  run: npm install

- name: Typecheck
  run: npx tsc

- name: 🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev
  env:
    TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
  run: |
    npx trigger.dev@latest deploy

deploy --dry-run

You can now inspect the build output of your project without actually deploying it to Trigger.dev by using the --dry-run flag:

npx trigger.dev@latest deploy --dry-run

This will save the build output and print the path to the build output directory. If you face any issues with deploying, please include the build output in your issue report.

--env-file

You can now pass the path to your local .env file using the --env-file flag during dev and deploy commands:

npx trigger.dev@latest dev --env-file ../../.env
npx trigger.dev@latest deploy --env-file ../../.env

The .env file works slightly differently in dev vs deploy:

  • In dev, the .env file is loaded into the CLI’s process.env and also into the environment variables of the Trigger.dev environment.
  • In deploy, the .env file is loaded into the CLI’s process.env but not into the environment variables of the Trigger.dev environment. If you want to sync the environment variables from the .env file to the Trigger.dev environment variables, you can use the syncEnvVars build extension.

dev debugging in VS Code

Debugging your tasks code in dev is now supported via VS Code, without having to pass in any additional flags. Create a launch configuration in .vscode/launch.json:

launch.json
{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Trigger.dev: Dev",
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
      "runtimeExecutable": "npx",
      "runtimeArgs": ["trigger.dev@latest", "dev"],
      "skipFiles": ["<node_internals>/**"],
      "sourceMaps": true
    }
  ]
}

Then you can start debugging your tasks code by selecting the Trigger.dev: Dev configuration in the debug panel, and set breakpoints in your tasks code.

TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN in dev

You can now authenticate the dev command using the TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable. Previously this was only supported in the deploy command.

TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your access token> npx trigger.dev@latest dev

Better deploy support for self-hosters

You can now specify a custom registry and namespace when deploying via a self-hosted instance of Trigger.dev:

npx trigger.dev@latest deploy \
  --self-hosted \
  --load-image \
  --registry docker.io \
  --namespace mydockerhubusername

All you have to do is create a repository in dockerhub that matches the project ref of your Trigger.dev project (e.g. proj_rrkpdguyagvsoktglnod)

Docker Hub will automatically create a repository the first time you push, which is public by default. If you want to keep these images private, make sure you create the repository before you first run the deploy command

Known issues

  • Path aliases are not yet support in your trigger.config.ts file. To workaround this issue you’ll need to rewrite path aliases to their relative paths. (See this and this) for more info.
  • *.test.ts and .spec.ts files inside the trigger dirs will be bundled and could cause issues. You’ll need to move these files outside of the trigger dirs to avoid this issue.