[travis-ci] Trigger a Travis-CI rebuild without pushing a commit?

Using Travis-CI, is it possible to trigger a rebuild without pushing a new commit to GitHub?

Use case: A build fails due to an externality. The source is actually correct. It would build OK and pass if simply re-run.

For instance, an apt-get fails due to a package server being down, but the server is back up again. However the build status is "stuck" at "failed" until a new commit is pushed.

Is there some way to nudge Travis-CI to do another build, other than pushing a "dummy" commit?

I should mention here that we now have a means of triggering a new build on the web. See https://blog.travis-ci.com/2017-08-24-trigger-custom-build for details.

TL;DR Click on "More options", and choose "Trigger build".

sometimes it happens that server do made some mistakes. try log out/sign in and everything might be right then. (Yes it happened this afternoon to me.)

If the build never occurred (perhaps you didn't get the Pull-Request build switch set to on in time), you can mark the Pull Request on Github as closed then mark it as opened and a new build will be triggered.

I just triggered the tests on a pull request to be re-run by clicking 'update branch' here:

Please make sure to Log In to Travis first. The rebuild button doesn't appear until you're logged in. I know this is obvious, but someone just tripped on it as well ;-)

If you open the Settings tab for the repository on GitHub, click on Integrations & services, find Travis CI and click Edit, you should see a Test Service button. This will trigger a build.

I have found another way of forcing re-run CI builds and other triggers:

1. Run git commit --amend --no-edit without any changes. This will recreate the last commit in the current branch.
2. git push --force-with-lease origin pr-branch.

Simlpy close and re-open the PR if you do not have the write access.

If you install the Travis CI Client you can use travis restart <job#> to manually re-run a build from the console. You can find the last job# for a branch using travis show <branch>

travis show master
travis restart 48 #use Job number without .1
travis logs master

UPDATE: Sadly it looks like this doesn't start a new build using the latest commit, but instead just restarts a previous build using the previous state of the repo.

Log in to Travis and go to the build page. You will see a "Restart Build" button on the top-right corner, next to the gear icon:

Note: you need to have write access to the linked GitHub repo for this to work.

I know you said without pushing a commit, but something that is handy, if you are working on a branch other than master, is to commit an empty commit.

git commit --allow-empty -m "Trigger"

You can rebase in the end and remove squash/remove the empty commits and works across all git hooks :)

Here's what worked for me to trigger a rebuild on a PR that Dependabot had opened, but failed due to errors in .travis.yml:

1. Close the PR
2. Wait for Dependabot to comment ("OK, I won't notify you again about this release, but will get in touch when a new version is available."). It will remove its branch.
3. Restore the branch Dependabot removed (something like dependabot/cargo/tempfile-3.0.4).
4. Open the PR again

Travis now offers a way to trigger a "custom" build from their web UI. Look for the "More Options" menu button on the right side near the top of your project's page.

You'll then be presented with a dialog box in which you can choose the branch and customize the configuration:

At the time I'm writing this it is in beta, and appears to be slightly buggy (but I expect they'll get the problems ironed out soon).

If you have new project on GitHub which has .travis.yml, but was never tested, you can run tests without commit this way:

1. enable testing in Travis CI setings
2. open project page on GitHub
3. open settings -> webhooks and services
4. find Travis CI in services and press edit button
5. press "Test service"

You can do this using the Travis CLI. As described in the documentation, first install the CLI tool, then:

travis login --org --auto
travis token

You can keep this token in an environment variable TRAVIS_TOKEN, as long as the file you keep it in is not version-controlled somewhere public.

I use this function to submit triggers:

function travis_trigger() {
     local org=$1 && shift
     local repo=$1 && shift
     local branch=${1:-master} && shift

     body="{
             \"request\": {
               \"branch\": \"${branch}\"
              }
           }"

     curl -s -X POST \
          -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
          -H "Accept: application/json" \
          -H "Travis-API-Version: 3" \
          -H "Authorization: token $TRAVIS_TOKEN" \
          -d "$body" \
          "https://api.travis-ci.org/repo/${org}%2F${repo}/requests"
 }