Share a file between two workflows in CircleCI - continuous-integration

In our repo build and deploy are two different workflows.
In build we call lerna to check for changed packages and save the output in a file saved to the current workspace.
check_changes:
working_directory: ~/project
executor: node
steps:
- checkout
- attach_workspace:
at: ~/project
- run:
command: npx lerna changed > changed.tmp
- persist_to_workspace:
root: ./
paths:
- changed.tmp
I'd like to pass the exact same file from build workflow to deploy workflow and access it in another job. How do I do that?
read_changes:
working_directory: ~/project
executor: node
steps:
- checkout
- attach_workspace:
at: ~/project
- run:
command: |
echo 'Reading changed.tmp file'
cat changed.tmp
According to this blog post
Unlike caching, workspaces are not shared between runs as they no
longer exists once a workflow is complete
it feels that caching would be the only option.
But according to the CircelCI documentation, my case doesn't fit their cache defintions:
Use the cache to store data that makes your job faster, but, in the
case of a cache miss or zero cache restore, the job still runs
successfully. For example, you might cache NPM package directories
(known as node_modules).

I think you can totally use caching here. Make sure you choose your key template(s) wisely.
The caveat to keep in mind is that (unlike the job level where you can use the requires key), there's no *native *way to sequentially execute workflows. Although you could consider using an orb for that; for example the roopakv/swissknife orb.
So you'll need to make sure that the job (that needs the file) in the deploy workflow, doesn't move to the restore_cache step until the save_cache in the other job has happened.

Related

Clearing build cache in angular

In angular 13 default build caching was introduced.
I want to use it in my CD/CI gitlab pipelines but I can't find any information about when the cache should be cleared.
For every merge request, I want to build my app and run some tests.
It is safe to use the same cached directory for each MR, no matter what was changed?
If not, what should be the key for the cache?
I didn't find anything about it in angular docs.
You could follow some best practices as illustrated in GitLab documentation, whose runners do have a cache management.
See "Good caching practices"
test-job:
stage: build
cache:
- key:
files:
- Gemfile.lock
paths:
- vendor/ruby
- key:
files:
- yarn.lock
paths:
- .yarn-cache/
script:
- bundle install --path=vendor
- yarn install --cache-folder .yarn-cache
- echo Run tests...
In this example, you indicate to yarn where the cache folder (from the runner) is.
In your case (Angular cache, as requested in issue 21545), if you use a GitLab runner cache, you can clear said cache when you want.

Cypress binary is missing and Gitlab CI pipeline

I'm trying to integrate cypress testing into gitlab pipeline.
I've tried about 10 different configurations which all fail.. I've included what I think are the relevant portions of of the gitlab.yml file, as well as the screenshot of the error on gitlab.
Thanks for any help
variables:
GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY: recursive
cache:
paths:
- src/ui/node_modules/
- /root/.cache/Cypress/ //added this, also have tried src/ui/cypress/
build_ui:
image: node:16.14.2
stage: build
script:
- cd src/ui
- yarn install --pure-lockfile --prefer-offline --cache-folder .yarn
ui_test:
image: node:16.14.2
stage: test
needs: [build_ui]
script:
- cd src/ui
- yarn run runCypressHeadless
Each job gets its own separate environment. Therefore, you need to install your dependencies in each job. Add your yarn install command to the ui_test job.
The reason why your cache: did not restore to the job from the previous stage is because caches are per job by default (e.g. caches are restored from previous pipelines that ran the same job). If you want subsequent jobs in the same pipeline to use the cache, set the cache:key: to something like $CI_COMMIT_SHA or use cache:key:files: to use a file key, like your lockfile(s).
Also, you can only cache paths in the workspace. So you won't be able to cache/restore /root/.cache/... -- instead you should change the cache location to somewhere in the workspace.
For additional reference, see: caching in GitLab CI and caching NodeJS dependencies.

Gitlab CI : how to cache node_modules from a prebuilt image?

The situation is this:
I'm running Cypress tests in a Gitlab CI (launched by vue-cli). To speed up the execution, I built a Docker image that contains the necessary dependencies.
How can I cache node_modules from the prebuilt image to use it in the test job ?
Currently I'm using an awful (but working) solution:
testsE2e:
image: path/to/prebuiltImg
stage: tests
script:
- ln -s /node_modules/ /builds/path/to/prebuiltImg/node_modules
- yarn test:e2e
- yarn test:e2e:report
But I think there must be a cleaner way using the Gitlab CI cache.
I've been testing:
cacheE2eDeps:
image: path/to/prebuiltImg
stage: dependencies
cache:
key: e2eDeps
paths:
- node_modules/
script:
- find / -name node_modules # check that node_modules files are there
- echo "Caching e2e test dependencies"
testsE2e:
image: path/to/prebuiltImg
stage: tests
cache:
key: e2eDeps
script:
- yarn test:e2e
- yarn test:e2e:report
But the job cacheE2eDeps displays a "WARNING: node_modules/: no matching files" error.
How can I do this successfully? The Gitlab documentation doesn't really talk about caching from a prebuilt image...
The Dockerfile used to build the image :
FROM cypress/browsers:node13.8.0-chrome81-ff75
COPY . .
RUN yarn install
There is not documentation for caching data from prebuilt images, because it’s simply not done. The dependencies are already available in the image so why cache them in the first place? It would only lead to an unnecessary data duplication.
Also, you seem to operate under the impression that cache should be used to share data between jobs, but it’s primary use case is sharing data between different runs of the same job. Sharing data between jobs should be done using artifacts.
In your case you can use cache instead of prebuilt image, like so:
variables:
CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/cache/Cypress"
testsE2e:
image: cypress/browsers:node13.8.0-chrome81-ff75
stage: tests
cache:
key: "e2eDeps"
paths:
- node_modules/
- cache/Cypress/
script:
- yarn install
- yarn test:e2e
- yarn test:e2e:report
The first time the above job is run, it’ll install dependencies from scratch, but the next time it’ll fetch them from the runner cache. The caveat is that unless all runners that run this job share cache, each time you run it on a new runner it’ll install the dependencies from scratch.
Here’s the documentation about using yarn with GitLab CI.
Edit:
To elaborate on using cache vs artifacts - artifacts are meant for both storing job output (eg. to manually download it later) and for passing results of one job to another one from a subsequent stage, while cache is meant to speed up job execution by preserving files that the job needs to download from the internet. See GitLab documentation for details.
Contents of node_modules directory obviously fit into the second category.

GITLAB CI Pipeline not triggered

I have written this yml file for GitLab CI/CD. There is a shared runner configured and running.
I am doing this first time and not sure where I am going wrong. The angular js project I am having
on the repo has a gulp build file and works perfectly on local machine. This code just has to trigger
that on the vm where my runner is present. On commit the pipeline does not show any job. Let me know what needs to be corrected!
image: docker:latest
cache:
paths:
- node_modules/
deploy_stage:
stage: build
only:
- master
environment: stage
script:
- rmdir -rf "build"
- mkdir "build"
- cd "build"
- git init
- git clone "my url"
- cd "path of cloned repository"
- gulp build
What branch are you commiting to? You pipeline is configured to run only for commit on master branch.
...
only:
- master
...
If you want to have triggered jobs for other branches as well then remove this restriction from .gitlab-ci.yml file.
Do not forget to Enable shared Runners (they may not be enabled by default), setting can be found on GitLab project page under Settings -> CI/CD -> Runners.
Update: Did your pipeline triggers ever work for your project?
If not then I would try configuring simple pipeline just to test if triggers work fine:
test_simple_job:
script:
- echo I should execute for any pipeline trigger.
I solved the problem by renaming the .gitlab-ci.yaml to .gitlab-ci.yml
I just wanted to add that I ran into a similar issue. I was committing my code and I was not seeing the pipeline trigger at all.There was also no error statement on gitlab nor in my vscode. It had ran perfectly before.My problem was because I had made some recent edits to my yaml that were invalid.I reverted the changes to a known valid yaml code, and it worked again and passed.
I also had this issue. I thought I would document the cause, in the hopes it may help someone (although this is not strictly an answer for the original question because my deploy script is more complex).
So in my case, the reason was that I had multiple jobs with the same job ID in my .gitlab-ci.yml. The latter one basically rendered the earlier one invisible.
# This job will never run:
deploy_my_stuff:
script:
- do something for job one
# This job overwrites the above.
deploy_my_stuff:
script:
- do something for job two
Totally obvious... after I discovered the mistake.

Gitlab-Ci: How could I share data between jobs

I want to share a file between two jobs and modify it if there are changed files. The python script compare the cache.json file with changes and modify the cahce file sometimes.
.gitlab-ci.yaml:
image: ubuntu
stages:
- test
cache:
key: one-cache
paths:
- cache.json
job1:
stage: test
script:
# - touch cache.json
- cat cache.json
- python3 modify_json_file.py
- cat cache.json
The problem is that it the cache.json file not exist at the next job run. I get the error message: cat: cache.json: No such file or directory. I did also insert once the touch command, but this doesn't change anything for the next run without the touch command.
Do I something wrong or don't I understand the cache at gitlab wrong.
I think you need artifacts and not cache.
From cache vs artifact:
cache - Use for temporary storage for project dependencies. Not useful for keeping intermediate build results, like jar or apk files. Cache was designed to be used to speed up invocations of subsequent runs of a given job, by keeping things like dependencies (e.g., npm packages, Go vendor packages, etc.) so they don't have to be re-fetched from the public internet. While the cache can be abused to pass intermediate build results between stages, there may be cases where artifacts are a better fit.
artifacts - Use for stage results that will be passed between stages. Artifacts were designed to upload some compiled/generated bits of the build, and they can be fetched by any number of concurrent Runners. They are guaranteed to be available and are there to pass data between jobs. They are also exposed to be downloaded from the UI.

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