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Maven / ArgoCD interview questions

How do ArgoCD Sync Waves and Sync Hooks work together to control deployment ordering?

ArgoCD provides two complementary mechanisms for controlling the order of resource application during a sync: Sync Waves control the sequence of resource groups, and Sync Hooks inject one-off Jobs at specific lifecycle phases.

Sync Waves

Every resource can be assigned an integer wave via the annotation argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave. Resources with lower wave numbers are applied first; ArgoCD waits for all resources in wave N to become healthy before advancing to wave N+1. The default wave is 0. Negative waves are useful for CRDs or Namespaces that must exist before other resources reference them.

metadata:
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "-1"  # Namespace first
---
metadata:
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "0"   # Default: Deployments, Services
---
metadata:
  annotations:
    argocd.argoproj.io/sync-wave: "1"   # Last: Ingress or smoke-test Job

Sync Hooks

Hooks are Kubernetes resources (usually Jobs) annotated with argocd.argoproj.io/hook. Available hook phases:

Hook PhaseWhen it runs
PreSyncBefore any resources are applied (e.g., database migrations)
SyncDuring the sync alongside other resources
PostSyncAfter all resources are healthy (e.g., smoke tests, notifications)
SyncFailOnly when the sync fails (e.g., rollback alerting job)

Waves and hooks compose naturally: a PreSync hook runs before wave -1, and a PostSync hook runs after the highest wave reaches healthy. Use argocd.argoproj.io/hook-delete-policy to clean up completed hook Jobs automatically.

What does ArgoCD do between sync waves before advancing to the next wave?
Which sync hook phase is best suited for running a database migration before application pods are deployed?

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