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May 25 20233 min read

# Keep Coder Templates up to date

[M Atif Ali](https://coder.com/blog/author/matifali)

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# Keep Coder templates up to date

Coder [Templates](https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/templates) help keep each developer's workspace consistent. When a new template version is created (e.g. with a newer version of Java or more CPU cores), all developers are notified to update their workspaces.

It’s easy to update an existing template. You can make local changes to the template directly and then push the changes to your Coder server in multiple ways.

To keep your Coder templates up to date, you need to push the changes to Coder server. A user with a `template-admin` or `owner` role can update templates.

## Use the Coder CLI to push changes to the Coder template

You can use the Coder CLI to push the changes to the template to the Coder server. This is the easiest way to update the template.

1. Install the Coder CLI. See [Installing the Coder CLI](https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/install) for more information.
2. Push the changes to the Coder server: ``` coder templates push <template-name> ```

This will push the changes to the template to the Coder server, assign a random name to the template, and create a new template version. All users will then see the **Update** button on their workspace.

## Using CI/CD

You can also use CI/CD to push the changes to the template to the Coder server. This is useful if you want to automate the process of updating the template. This is the preferred method if you have a version control system for your templates and want your developers to update the template by creating a pull request.

There are multiple ways to automate templates updates, like our [REST API](https://coder.com/docs/reference/api), [CLI](https://coder.com/docs/reference/cli) and [`terraform-provider-coderd`](https://registry.terraform.io/providers/coder/coderd/latest). Here we describe how to push template updates using the [`setup-coder`](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-coder) action which installs and authenticates the Coder CLI with your Coder server:

1. Create a new repository for your template(s).
2. In your repository, create a new workflow called `push-to-coder.yml`. See [Creating a workflow file](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/introduction-to-github-actions#creating-a-workflow-file) for more information.
3. Create a new personal access token with the **`template-admin`** or **`owner`** role. and add it to the repository action secrets with the name `CODER_SESSION_TOKEN`.
4. Use the [`setup-coder`](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-coder) action from GitHub marketplace to create the workflow: ``` coder tokens create --lifetime 8760h0m0s ```
5. Add the following steps to the `push-to-coder.yaml` workflow: ``` name: Push template to coder server on: push: branches: - main pull_request: branches: - main workflow_dispatch: jobs: deploy_template: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout uses: actions/checkout@v4 with: submodules: true - name: Get short commit SHA # to use as template version name id: vars run: echo "::set-output name=sha_short::$(git rev-parse --short HEAD)" - name: Setup Coder uses: coder/setup-action@v1 with: access_url: 'https://coder.example.com' coder_session_token: ${{ secrets.CODER_SESSION_TOKEN }} - name: "Push template" run: | coder templates push <template-name> / --directory ./<template-directory> / --name ${{ steps.vars.outputs.sha_short }} / --yes ```
6. Push the changes to the Git repository. This will trigger the workflow and push the changes to the template to the Coder server.

> See Coder's [`setup-coder`](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/setup-coder) on GitHub marketplace.
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> See Coder's [dogfood example workflow](https://github.com/coder/coder/blob/main/.github/workflows/dogfood.yaml).
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> See a community action [Update Coder Template](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/update-coder-template) to automatically update templates.

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