kubectl rollout undo: Command Reference for CI/CD

Revert a bad deploy to the last known-good revision.

kubectl rollout undo reverts a Deployment to its previous revision, or to a specific one you name. It is the rollback half of a safe CI deploy. This reference covers undo, history, and the change-cause annotation that makes history readable.

Common flags and usage

rollout undo deploy/<name>: revert to the previous revision
--to-revision=N: revert to a specific revision number
rollout history deploy/<name>: list revisions and change-causes
rollout history --revision=N: show one revision in detail
Annotate kubernetes.io/change-cause so history is meaningful

Example

shell

kubectl rollout history deploy/web
kubectl rollout undo deploy/web --to-revision=3
kubectl rollout status deploy/web --timeout=120s

In CI

Wire undo into the failure branch of your deploy gate so a rollout that misses its deadline auto-reverts. Set the change-cause annotation on each deploy (e.g. the commit SHA) so rollout history tells you exactly which revision to roll back to.

Key takeaways

undo reverts to the previous revision; --to-revision targets a specific one.
rollout history is only useful if you set change-cause annotations.
Chain undo into the failure path of rollout status for auto-rollback.

Related guides

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