New Feature
1- A repository can now list paths that must survive a deployment. Deploy mirrors the repository into the target and removes anything the repository does not contain, which meant files the application itself owns — .env, storage, uploaded media — were lost on every deploy with no way to prevent it. Listed paths are kept, the deployment log states what was preserved, and repositories without a list behave exactly as before.
Improvement
1- Pipeline deploy steps apply the same preserve list as a manual deploy, so the two cannot disagree.