Managing Artifacts Across Stages in GitLab CI

In GitLab CI, you can define multiple stages in your .gitlab-ci.yml file, allowing you to run different scripts in a sequential manner. One common use case is to build a tool in one stage and then use it in a subsequent stage for testing. To achieve this, you can declare the generated tool as an artifact, which makes it available for later jobs.

Example Configuration

In the following example, we have two stages: build and test. The build stage compiles a tool and saves it as an artifact, while the test stage runs tests using that tool.

releasebuild:
  stage: build
  script:
    - chcp 65001
    - build.cmd
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - artifacts/bin/TestTool/

systemtests:
  stage: test
  script:
    - chcp 65001
    - artifacts/bin/TestTool/TestTool.exe
    - run_tests.bat

Explanation of the Configuration

• releasebuild Job: This job is responsible for building the tool. It runs the build.cmd script and specifies that the directory artifacts/bin/TestTool/ should be saved as an artifact. This directory contains the executable and any necessary files (like DLLs).
• systemtests Job: This job runs in the test stage and retrieves the artifact created in the previous stage. The script first sets the code page to UTF-8 and then executes the built tool (TestTool.exe) along with a script (run_tests.bat) to perform the tests.

Important Notes

• Ensure that the paths you specify in the artifacts section are relative to the repository root.
• Artifacts are automatically downloaded to the working directory of the job that follows the one that created them, so you can directly reference them in your scripts.
• If you need to pass additional files or directories, you can modify the artifacts paths accordingly.

By structuring your .gitlab-ci.yml file this way, you can effectively manage dependencies between different stages of your CI/CD pipeline, ensuring that each job has access to the necessary files produced in earlier stages.