Development Environment GitOps Workflow Design

[maxju]

We need to establish a robust GitOps workflow for testing features in the development environment. The development environment should be fully controlled (running in denbi or similar) with 1 Hub and 2-3 Nodes so we can use FluxCD or ArgoCD to deploy features to it.

For this we need a separate private repository for helm values files

Proposed workflow:

For service feature testing:

1. Developer finishes feature in service repo (e.g., PrivateAIM/Hub or PrivateAIM/node-storage-service)
2. Push feature-specific docker tag in service repo
3. Update private values repo to use that image tag
4. ArgoCD/FluxCD automatically updates deployment
5. If successful, merge feature into development branch → triggers build with "development" tag
6. Update private values repo to use "development" tag again
7. Feature can merge directly to master for full release to staging

For helm chart testing:

1. Create feature branch in helm repo
2. Update private values repo to configure FluxCD to use new branch
3. FluxCD pulls branch and performs helm upgrade
4. If successful, merge branch into "development"
5. Update FluxCD config to use "development" branch again
6. Feature can merge directly to master for release