I’m trying to set up GitLab CI/CD for an old client-side project that makes use of Grunt (https://github.com/yeoman/generator-angular).
Up to now the deployment worked like this:
run ’$ grunt build’ locally which built the project and created files in a ‘dist’ folder in the root of the project
commit changes
changes pulled onto production server
After creating the .gitlab-ci.yml and making a commit, the GitLab CI/CD job passes but the files in the ‘dist’ folder in the repository are not updated. If I define an artifact, I will get the changed files in the download. However I would prefer the files in ‘dist’ folder in the to be updated so we can carry on with the same workflow which suits us. Is this achievable?
I don't think commiting into your repo inside a pipeline is a good idea. Version control wouldn't be as clear, some people have automatic pipeline trigger when their repo is pushed, that'd trigger a loop of pipelines.
Instead, you might reorganize your environment to use Docker, there are numerous reasons for using Docker in a professional and development environments. To name just a few: that'd enable you to save the freshly built project into a registry and reuse it whenever needed right with the version you require and with the desired /dist inside. So that you can easily run it in multiple places, scale it, manage it etc.
If you changed to Docker you wouldn't actually have to do a thing in order to have the dist persistent, just push the image to the registry after the build is done.
But to actually answer your question:
There is a feature request hanging for a very long time for the same problem you asked about: here. Currently there is no safe and professional way to do it as GitLab members state. Although you can push back changes as one of the GitLab members suggested (Kamil Trzciński):
git push http://gitlab.com/group/project.git HEAD:my-branch
Just put it in your script section inside gitlab-ci file.
There are more hack'y methods presented there, but be sure to acknowledge risks that come with them (pipelines are more error prone and if configured in a wrong way, they might for example publish some confidential information and trigger an infinite pipelines loop to name a few).
I hope you found this useful.
Related
I have setup a Git project + CI (using Gitlab-runner) on Gitlab v12.3.5. I have a question about issues and pipelines. Let's say I create an issue and assign it to myself. So this create a branch/merge request. Then, I open up the WebIDE to modify some files in an attempt to fix the issue. Now I want to see what if my changes will fix the issue. In order to run the pipeline, is it necessary to commit the changes into the branch or is there some other way?
The scenario I have is that it may take me 20 times to fix the files to make the pipeline 'clean'. In that case, I would have to keep committing on each change to see the results. What is the preferred way to accomplish this? Is it possible to run the pipeline by just staging the changes to see if they work?
I am setting up the gitlab-ci.yaml file. Hence it is taking a lot of trials to get it working properly.
You should create a branch and push to that. Only pushed changes will trigger pipeline runs. After you're done, you can squash and merge the branch so that the repo's history will be clean.
Usually though, you won't have to do this because you'll have automated tests set up to check whether your code works. You should also try testing the Linux commands (or whichever commands you're running in your GitLab CI scripts) locally first. If you're worried about whether your .gitlab-ci.yml syntax is correct, you can navigate to the file in your repository and check there (there's a button at the top which lints it).
I have a DigitalOcean VPS with ubuntu and a few laravel projects, for my projects initial setup I do a git clone to create a folder with my application files from my online repository.
I do all development work in my local machine, where I have two branches (master and develop), what I do is merge develop into my local master, then I push from master into my local repository.
Nw back into my production server, when I want to add all the changes added into production I do a git pull from origin, so far this has resulted into git telling me to stash my changes, why is this?
What would be the best approach to pull changes into production server? take in mind that my production server has no working directory perse, all I do in my VPS is either clone or push upgrades into production.
You can take a look at the CI/CD (continuous integration / continuous delivery) systems. GitLab for example offer free-to-use plan for small teams.
You can create a pipeline with a manual deploy step (you have to press a button after the code is merged to the master branch) and use whatever tool you like to deploy your code (scp, rsync, ftp, sftp etc.).
And the biggest benefit is that you can have multiple intermediate steps (even for the working branches) where you can run unit tests which would prevent you to upload failing builds (whenever you merge non-working code)
For the first problem, do a git status on production to see which files that git sees as changed or added and consider adding them to your .gitignore file (which itself should be a part of your repo). Laravel generally has good defaults for these, but you might have added things or deviated from them in the process of upgrading Laravel.
For the deployment, the best practice is to have something that is consistent, reproducible, loggable, and revertable. For this, I would recommend choosing a deployment utility. These usually do pretty much the same thing:
You define deployment parameters in code, which you can commit as a part of your repo (not passwords, of course, but things like the server name, deploy path, and deploy tasks).
You initiate a deploy directly from your local computer.
The script/utility SSH's into your target server and pulls the latest code from the remote git repo (authorized via SSH key forwarded into the server) into a 'release' folder.
The script does any additional tasks you define (composer install, npm run prod, systemctl restart php-fpm, soft-linking shared files like .env, and etc.)
The script soft-links the document root to your new 'release' folder, which results in an essentially zero-downtime deployment. If any of the previous steps fail, or you find a bug in the latest release, you just soft-link to the previous release folder and your site still works.
Here are some solutions you can check out that all do this sort of thing:
Laravel Envoyer: A 1st-party (paid) service that allows you to deploy via a web-based GUI.
Laravel Envoy: A 1st-party (free) package that allows you to connect to your prod server and script deployment tasks. It's very bare-bones in that you have to write all of the commands yourself, but some may prefer that.
Capistrano: This is (free) a tried-and-tested popular ruby-based deployment utility.
Deployer: The (free) PHP equivalent of Capistrano. Easier to use, has a lot of built-in tasks (including a Laravel one), and doesn't require ruby.
Using these utilities is not necessarily exclusive of doing CI/CD if you want to go that route. You can use these tools to define the CD step in your pipeline while still doing other steps beforehand.
I started exploring Gitlab for version control management and I got an issue at the first step itsself. When ever I create a project its creating a new repository. I have few webapplications which are independent to each other. In that case do I need to use different repository for every project.
What I am looking for is what is what and when to use what but not able to find what is repository and what is project in gitlab website as well as through other sources as well.
Also I came across a term submodule, when can it be used. Can I create one global project and have all the webapplications as different submodules.
Can any one please help me in understanding the difference between those 3 and when to use what based on their intended way of usage. Also please help me by pointing to a good learning site where I can get the information of doing basic version control operations in gitlab.
Thanks.
Gitlab manages projects: a project has many features in addition of the Git repo it includes:
issues: powerful, but lightweight issue tracking system.
merge requests: you can review and discuss code before it is merged in the branch of your code.
wiki: separate system for documentation, built right into GitLab
snippets: Snippets are little bits of code or text.
So fear each repo you create, you get additional features in its associated project.
And you can manage users associated to that project.
See GitLab documentation for more.
The Git repo and Git submodule are pure Git notions.
In your case, a submodule might not be needed, unless you want a convenient way to remember the exact versions of different webapp repo, recorded in one parent repo.
But if that is the case, then yes, you can create one global project and have all the webapplications as different submodules.
Each of those submodules would have their own GitLab project (and Git repo).
We have setup and perfectly running gitlab + gitlab-ci installation. We are now looking how to do cross-project builds. Our project is divided into several repositories and everything is joined during build process via composer.
What I would like to achieve is - when you commit to any of those repositories, they trigger main repository to get built. I was trying to achieve this via webhooks, unfortunately I need a lot of information about commit from the main repository, that I don't have.
Any idea how to do it?
I updated gitlab-ci code a little bit: https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-ci/commit/7c7066b0d5a35097a04bb31848d6b622195940ed
I can now call the api.
I am new to the world of grunt but I feel like there must be a way to do this. Hopefully I can explain my issue in a way that makes sense so you can be of assistance.
Essentially, I have a git project, including a gruntfile, that I use to start all new websites. I clone the project, delete the .git folder and setup a new project in bitbucket for it. Over time I have had to make some modifications to the gruntfile and it is annoying to go back to an old project where I hadn't made those modifications. Is there a recommended way to ensure that my template is up to date on all of my projects?
Things to note:
1) I am familiar with grunt scaffolding but I have never used it, is this the use case for it?
2) my projects live in bitbucket and are private. My initial solution to this problem was to use grunt curl and pull the latest and overwrite the previous gruntfile
3) The issue with #2 is that I would need to put my username/password in the path and can't figure out how to prompt the user, even if I do and they enter the login incorrectly bitbucket still returns something (a bad login page) and this would overwrite my gruntfile.
Thanks in advance! I appreciate anyones input
I assume you are using git with bitbucket. If that is the case you can do a pull from a master repo that contains your template grunt file in each of your project repositories for the desired effect.
See this answer for how to pull from a remote repo.
remote repo q
Since you only care about merging in changes from the Gruntfile.js you can pull it specifically from the remote template repo. I'd suggest following this pattern assuming you add the remote reference to you template repo when necessary:
From you project repo create a new branch
Pull the Gruntfile.js from the template repo
Resolve any merge conflicts
Merge with master
See the last answer on this question for how to pull a single file:
fetch a single file