Delta-change deployments in Hutte allow you to deploy only the metadata changes included in the release. This is achieved regardless of the size or complexity of the metadata stored in the repository.
Hutte calculates delta changes by comparing the content of the main branch at a specific point in time (commit X) with the most recent state included into that release (latest commit).
Since the main branch consists of merge commits created from pull requests, each merge commit essentially represents the changes associated with a single user story.
But how does Hutte determine the last commit (merge commit) that has already been deployed?
To achieve this, when a release is deployed to production, Hutte automatically creates a Git Tag on the latest commit included in that deployment. This Git Tag serves as a reference point for future releases. During the next release, Hutte uses this tag to identify the starting point for calculating the changes, ensuring only changed metadata is included in the deployment.