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Select Vendored Components by Stack, Label, or Tag

· 3 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

A CI job deploying the dev stack shouldn't need to vendor every component in the repository -- just the ones dev actually uses. Production deploys have the same problem in reverse: pulling in components that belong to other environments wastes time and widens what that job can touch. Selecting the right subset meant either hand-listing every component with repeated --component flags or reaching for --everything and pulling in components the job has nothing to do with.

The Problem​

Scoping a vendor pull to "just what this stack needs" is a selection CI reaches for on every deploy, not an occasional convenience. Without it, the choice was between hand-listing every component or vendoring the entire repository. Neither scales, and neither composes: picking components by tag, by name, and by the stack they belong to used to be three separate, mutually exclusive modes rather than filters that could work together.

The Fix​

atmos vendor pull now accepts --stack and --labels selectors, and --tags composes with either of them (or with --component) as an independent, narrowing filter -- across pull, diff, clean, update, and verify alike:

  • --stack vendors every component declared in that stack that has its own component.yaml.
  • --labels filters that eligible stack component set by each component's stack metadata.labels.
  • --tags narrows whichever set --stack/--labels (or --component) resolved, down to components whose declared source tags match.

Combining selectors that don't overlap now fails with a clear error instead of silently matching nothing or falling back to a different set than you asked for.

How to Use It​

# Vendor each stack component that has a component.yaml
atmos vendor pull --stack plat-ue2-dev

# Select by stack metadata.labels instead of stack name
atmos vendor pull --labels tier=1,cost-center:platform

# Narrow a stack selection further by declared tag
atmos vendor pull --stack plat-ue2-dev --tags networking

# Preview instead of pulling
atmos vendor pull --stack plat-ue2-dev --dry-run

The same selectors work on the other vendor subcommands:

atmos vendor diff --stack plat-ue2-dev --tags networking
atmos vendor update --labels tier=1 --check
atmos vendor clean --stack plat-ue2-dev
atmos vendor verify --labels tier=1

For atmos vendor pull, --stack/--labels install each matched component from its own component.yaml, bypassing vendor.yaml entirely -- components without one are skipped, and if every matched component lacks a component.yaml the command succeeds having pulled nothing. It only fails with the shared selector's "no components matched" error when --stack/--labels itself resolves to no stack, or when --tags narrows an already non-empty selection down to zero. --component still selects a single, explicitly named component and isn't combined with --stack/--labels, but composes with --tags the same way they do. diff, update, clean, and verify use the same selectors to resolve component names, but retain their own manifest-resolution rules (vendor.yaml first, falling back to component.yaml).

Get Involved​

Have feedback or ideas for vendor improvements? Join our Slack community or open an issue on GitHub.