CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mavengitlabgitlab-ci
J Fabian Meier
J Fabian Meier

Reputation: 35785

Create "release" from main branch in Gitlab CI

Currently, our developers create release versions of Java artifacts by manually triggering a process that takes the main branch and builds a release version through Maven.

I wonder how I should implement this in GitLab CI. In GitHub Actions, I could, e.g., write a "release" workflow file and then run it manually through the Actions tab.

In GitLab CI, I found that one could run jobs manually, but jobs are just part of a pipeline. Furthermore, you can start pipeline runs manually, but this would trigger the standard pipeline (SNAPSHOT build, etc.). One could use a variable RELEASE, but letting the user input "RELEASE=true" for every release build seems cumbersome.

Is there any straightforward way to solve this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4002

Answers (1)

sytech
sytech

Reputation: 40861

GitLab's release-cli is made for this use-case. It is documented in create a release by using a cicd job. The release: key can be used for easily configuring the job to invoke release-cli with corresponding options.

It is a common practice to create releases using a tag -- that way release jobs only run when a tag is deliberately pushed. You can use something like rules: - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG.

release_job:
  stage: release
  image: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release-cli:latest
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG                  # Run this job when a tag is created manually
  script:
    - echo "running release_job"
  release:
    name: 'Release $CI_COMMIT_TAG'
    description: 'Created using the release-cli $EXTRA_DESCRIPTION'  # $EXTRA_DESCRIPTION must be defined
    tag_name: '$CI_COMMIT_TAG'                                       # elsewhere in the pipeline.
    ref: '$CI_COMMIT_TAG'
    milestones:
      - 'm1'
      - 'm2'
      - 'm3'
    released_at: '2020-07-15T08:00:00Z'  # Optional, is auto generated if not defined, or can use a variable.
    assets: # Optional, multiple asset links
      links:
        - name: 'asset1'
          url: 'https://example.com/assets/1'
        - name: 'asset2'
          url: 'https://example.com/assets/2'
          filepath: '/pretty/url/1' # optional
          link_type: 'other' # optional

You can, of course, also just create a job with a script: that invokes release-cli.

You could also control your job other ways, like with when: manual so that releases are only created by deliberate action on pipelines for the main branch.

rules:
  - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"'
    when: manual

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions