gitlab-cicd-pipeline

SKILL.md

GitLab CI/CD Pipeline

Table of Contents

Overview

When to Use

Quick Start

Reference Guides

Best Practices

Overview

Create comprehensive GitLab CI/CD pipelines that automate building, testing, and deployment using GitLab Runner infrastructure and container execution.

When to Use

GitLab repository CI/CD setup

Multi-stage build pipelines

Docker registry integration

Kubernetes deployment

Review app deployment

Cache optimization

Dependency management

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

# .gitlab-ci.yml
image: node:18-alpine

variables:
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
  FF_USE_FASTZIP: "true"

stages:
  - lint
  - test
  - build
  - security
  - deploy-review
  - deploy-prod

cache:
  key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
  paths:
    - node_modules/
    - .npm/

lint:
  stage: lint
  script:
    - npm install
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Guide
Contents

Complete Pipeline Configuration
Complete Pipeline Configuration

GitLab Runner Configuration
GitLab Runner Configuration

Docker Layer Caching Optimization
Docker Layer Caching Optimization

Multi-Project Pipeline
Multi-Project Pipeline

Kubernetes Deployment
Kubernetes Deployment, Performance Testing Stage, Release Pipeline with Semantic Versioning

Best Practices

✅ DO

Use stages to organize pipeline flow

Implement caching for dependencies

Use artifacts for test reports

Set appropriate cache keys

Implement conditional execution with only and except

Use needs: for job dependencies

Clean up artifacts with expire_in

Use Docker for consistent environments

Implement security scanning stages

Set resource limits for jobs

Use merge request pipelines

❌ DON'T

Run tests serially when parallelizable

Cache everything unnecessarily

Leave large artifacts indefinitely

Store secrets in configuration files

Run privileged Docker without necessity

Skip security scanning

Ignore pipeline failures

Use only: [main] without proper controls

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