GitLab CI/CD 1 cheatsheet

GitLab CI/CD 1: Deploy and reuse

7 common GitLab CI/CD 1 tasks.

Deploy to an environment

Track deployments and their URL in GitLab.

deploy-prod:
  stage: deploy
  environment:
    name: production
    url: https://www.example.com
  script:
    - ./deploy.sh

Prevent concurrent deployments

Make deploy jobs run one at a time.

deploy-prod:
  resource_group: production

Build a Docker image

Build and push to the project's registry, using the predefined CI variables.

build-image:
  image: docker:27
  services:
    - docker:27-dind
  script:
    - docker login -u "$CI_REGISTRY_USER" -p "$CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD" "$CI_REGISTRY"
    - docker build -t "$CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE:$CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA" .
    - docker push "$CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE:$CI_COMMIT_SHORT_SHA"

Share job settings

Define a hidden template job, and reuse it with extends.

.node-job:
  image: node:24
  before_script:
    - npm ci

test-job:
  extends: .node-job
  script:
    - npm test

Include other files

Include a template or a shared file from another project.

include:
  - local: ci/deploy.yml
  - template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml

Trigger a downstream pipeline

Start a pipeline in another project.

trigger-deploy:
  trigger:
    project: my-group/deploy-repo
    branch: main

Useful predefined variables

Common variables GitLab sets for every job.

$CI_COMMIT_SHA
$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH
$CI_COMMIT_TAG
$CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
$CI_PROJECT_DIR
$CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE