Self-hosted gitlab ci/cd step after deploy preview

confusus · October 9, 2020, 2:20pm

We have the following steps in our “pipeline” when we create a merge request. This “pipeline” is shared across 2 repositories, e.g. repo A & repo B.

Trigger unit tests
Netlify builds a deploy preview as the environment is configured to trigger on merge request events (regardless of success / failure of step 1)
Netlify adds a step in the pipeline (?)
Using Netlify functions we trigger a gitlab pipeline in repo B as soon as the site is deployed.

I would like to go to the following situation, preferably using .gitlab-ci.yml:

Trigger unit tests
(depending on output step 1) build a deploy preview
(depending on output step 2) kick off repo B pipeline

The .gitlab-ci.yml could be something like this:

stages:
  - test
  - deploy-preview
  - e2e-tests

test:
  stage: test
  image: node:12
  script:
    - npm install --no-save
    - npm test

e2e-tests:
  stage: e2e-tests
  script:
    ...code to kickoff e2e tests in repo B

Is something like this possible? Or would it be an alternative to resort to ‘manually’ deploying deploy previews using netlify-cli within .gitlab-ci.yml?

Dennis · October 14, 2020, 6:01pm

Hi @confusus, if I understand correctly, you are asking if there is some build integration with .gitlab-ci.yml? There is currently no .gitlab-ci.yml stage to do what you describe. You could probably use our build system to trigger your e2e tests either via a deploy notification or directly as part of your build command. Let me know if that makes sense.

confusus · October 20, 2020, 7:16am

Hi @Dennis! That is indeed what I was trying to ask. We couldn’t use the build system to trigger our e2e tests because it was a bit limited. I.e. the options given when configuring a outgoing webhook are:

Deploy request pending / accepted / rejected
Deploy started / succeeded / failed / locked / unlocked

Where we needed a notification only on a production branch deploy, hence the Netlify Function (which isn’t the most elegant solution…) to kick off our e2e tests.

How could we go about triggering e2e tests as part of our build command? Could the e2e tests still be triggered after the deploy?

confusus · October 27, 2020, 11:00am

Just giving a little update for those wandering this forum with similar questions.

It seems like the solution to our problem would be using a plugin like netlify-plugin-cypress.

edit: this will require us to merge the two repositories into one, but makes it easier to keep e2e tests in sync with merge requests

perry · October 30, 2020, 7:14pm

thanks for sharing, @confusus!

confusus · November 5, 2020, 2:13pm

Unfortunately it is still a bit finicky… Right now we’re running the e2e tests on a dedicated gitlab runner, where if we would use the plugin, the e2e tests would run on the netlify servers. These are a bit slower, causing our e2e tests to fail.

fool · November 14, 2020, 12:10am

Hiya @confusus.

Have you seen this article on the topic? [Support Guide] Testing your Netlify builds

It describes several options for testing, but my preferred alternative to what you are doing is:

lock deploys so we don’t autopublish new commits
send deploy notifications to your CI server (maybe gitlab?) with every deploy
potentially filter those notifications at the CI server (or via zapier, who could for instance choose NOT to forward builds for deploy-previews since you don’t need to e2e test MR’s)
have it kick off tests which can take as long as you like
if successful, you can via API publish an existing deploy and re-lock; something like these two calls:

Hopefully that helps!