Cloud Native CI/CD with GitLab

Understanding and Using Workflows

We have seen how to control the execution of a job based on conditions. For example, a job will launch only when a specific branch is pushed or when a specific user triggers the pipeline. However, sometimes you need to control the execution of the whole pipeline conditionally. We already have the tools that allows us to do that, for example, using the rules keyword in each job. But this approach becomes tedious and redundant. This is where the workflow keyword is useful.

Example:

Let's use this command to create a .gitlab-ci.yml file with a workflow that runs only when the branch name starts with feature/:

Instead of writing the following .gitlab-ci.yml file:

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - deploy

job-1:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "running job-1"
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH =~ /^feature\//'

job-2:
  stage: test
  script:
    - echo "running job-2"
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH =~ /^feature\//'

job-3:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "running job-3"
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH =~ /^feature\//'