- Concepts
- Configuration
- Features
- Examples
- Administration
- Related topics
- Major version changes (breaking)
GitLab CI/CD is a tool for software development using the continuous methodologies:
- Continuous Integration (CI)
- Continuous Delivery (CD)
- Continuous Deployment (CD)
Out-of-the-box management systems can decrease hours spent on maintaining toolchains by 10% or more.Watch our “Mastering continuous software development”webcast to learn about continuous methods and how GitLab CI/CD can help you simplify and scale software development.
Use GitLab CI/CD to catch bugs and errors early inthe development cycle. Ensure that all the code deployed toproduction complies with the code standards you established foryour app.
GitLab CI/CD can automatically build, test, deploy, andmonitor your applications by using Auto DevOps.
For a complete overview of these methodologies and GitLab CI/CD,read the Introduction to CI/CD with GitLab.
Video demonstration of continuous integration with GitLab CI/CD: Continuous Integration with GitLab (overview demo).
Concepts
GitLab CI/CD uses a number of concepts to describe and run your build and deploy.
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Pipelines | Structure your CI/CD process through pipelines. |
| CI/CD variables | Reuse values based on a variable/value key pair. |
| Environments | Deploy your application to different environments (for example, staging, production). |
| Job artifacts | Output, use, and reuse job artifacts. |
| Cache dependencies | Cache your dependencies for a faster execution. |
| GitLab Runner | Configure your own runners to execute your scripts. |
| Pipeline efficiency | Configure your pipelines to run quickly and efficiently. |
| Test cases | Create testing scenarios. |
Configuration
GitLab CI/CD supports numerous configuration options:
| Configuration | Description |
|---|---|
| Schedule pipelines | Schedule pipelines to run as often as you need. |
| Custom path for .gitlab-ci.yml | Define a custom path for the CI/CD configuration file. |
| Git submodules for CI/CD | Configure jobs for using Git submodules. |
| SSH keys for CI/CD | Using SSH keys in your CI pipelines. |
| Pipeline triggers | Trigger pipelines through the API. |
| Merge request pipelines | Design a pipeline structure for running a pipeline in merge requests. |
| Integrate with Kubernetes clusters | Connect your project to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or an existing Kubernetes cluster. |
| Optimize GitLab and GitLab Runner for large repositories | Recommended strategies for handling large repositories. |
| .gitlab-ci.yml full reference | All the attributes you can use with GitLab CI/CD. |
Certain operations can only be performed according to theuser and job permissions.
Features
GitLab CI/CD features, grouped by DevOps stage, include:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Configure | |
| Auto DevOps | Set up your app’s entire lifecycle. |
| ChatOps | Trigger CI jobs from chat, with results sent back to the channel. |
| Connect to cloud services | Connect to cloud providers using OpenID Connect (OIDC) to retrieve temporary credentials to access services or secrets. |
| Verify | |
| Browser Performance Testing | Quickly determine the browser performance impact of pending code changes. |
| Load Performance Testing | Quickly determine the server performance impact of pending code changes. |
| CI services | Link Docker containers with your base image. |
| GitLab CI/CD for external repositories | Get the benefits of GitLab CI/CD combined with repositories in GitHub and Bitbucket Cloud. |
| Interactive Web Terminals | Open an interactive web terminal to debug the running jobs. |
| Review Apps | Configure GitLab CI/CD to preview code changes. |
| Unit test reports | Identify test failures directly on merge requests. |
| Using Docker images | Use GitLab and GitLab Runner with Docker to build and test applications. |
| Release | |
| Auto Deploy | Deploy your application to a production environment in a Kubernetes cluster. |
| Building Docker images | Maintain Docker-based projects using GitLab CI/CD. |
| Canary Deployments | Ship features to only a portion of your pods and let a percentage of your user base to visit the temporarily deployed feature. |
| Deploy boards | Check the current health and status of each CI/CD environment running on Kubernetes. |
| Feature Flags | Deploy your features behind Feature Flags. |
| GitLab Pages | Deploy static websites. |
| GitLab Releases | Add release notes to Git tags. |
| Cloud deployment | Deploy your application to a main cloud provider. |
| Secure | |
| Code Quality | Analyze your source code quality. |
| Container Scanning | Check your Docker containers for known vulnerabilities. |
| Dependency Scanning | Analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities. |
| License Compliance | Search your project dependencies for their licenses. |
| Security Test reports | Check for app vulnerabilities. |
Examples
See the CI/CD examples page for example project code and tutorials forusing GitLab CI/CD with various:
- App frameworks
- Languages
- Platforms
Administration
You can change the default behavior of GitLab CI/CD for:
- An entire GitLab instance in the CI/CD administration settings.
- Specific projects in the pipelines settings.
See also:
- Enable or disable GitLab CI/CD in a project.
Learn more about GitLab CI/CD:
- Why you might choose GitLab CI/CD.
- Reasons you might migrate from another platform.
- Five teams that made the switch to GitLab CI/CD.
- If you use VS Code to edit your GitLab CI/CD configuration, theGitLab Workflow VS Code extension helps youvalidate your configurationand view your pipeline status.
See also the Why CI/CD? presentation.
Major version changes (breaking)
As GitLab CI/CD has evolved, certain breaking changes havebeen necessary.
For GitLab 15.0 and later, all breaking changes are documented on the following pages:
- Deprecations
- Removals
The breaking changes for GitLab Runner in earliermajor version releases are:
- 14.0: No breaking changes.
- 13.0:
- Remove Backported
os.Expand. - Remove Fedora 29 package support.
- Remove macOS 32-bit support.
- Removed
debug/jobs/list?v=1endpoint. - Remove support for array of strings when defining services for Docker executor.
- Remove
--docker-servicesflag on register command. - Remove legacy build directory caching.
- Remove
FF_USE_LEGACY_VOLUMES_MOUNTING_ORDERfeature flag. - Remove support for Windows Server 1803.
- Remove Backported
- 12.0:
