gitlab-ci

GitLab CI/CD Skill

GitLab CI runs pipelines defined in .gitlab-ci.yml at the repository root. This skill covers pipeline authoring with a Drupal project as the working example: validate → test → build → deploy, with composer caching and drush-based deployment.

---

Pipeline anatomy

stages:
  - validate
  - test
  - deploy

default:
  image: php:8.3-cli
  before_script:
    - curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

variables:
  COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR: "$CI_PROJECT_DIR/.composer-cache"

cache:
  key:
    files:
      - composer.lock        # cache invalidates when the lock file changes
  paths:
    - .composer-cache/
    - vendor/

• stages run sequentially; jobs within a stage run in parallel.
• default holds settings shared by all jobs.
• Cache vs artifacts: cache is best-effort storage between pipelines (composer/npm caches); artifacts pass build results between jobs of the same pipeline and can be downloaded from the UI.

---

Controlling when jobs run — rules:

rules: replaces the deprecated only/except:

phpcs:
  stage: validate
  script:
    - composer install --no-progress
    - vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=Drupal,DrupalPractice web/modules/custom
  rules:
    - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH

First matching rule wins. Common conditions:

Goal	Rule
MR pipelines only	if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
Default branch only	if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
Tags only	if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG
Skip on draft MRs	if: $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_TITLE =~ /^Draft:/ + when: never
Manual gate	when: manual (e.g. production deploy)

---

Drupal test jobs

phpstan:
  stage: test
  script:
    - composer install --no-progress
    - vendor/bin/phpstan analyse web/modules/custom

phpunit:
  stage: test
  services:
    - name: mariadb:11.4
      alias: db
  variables:
    MARIADB_DATABASE: drupal_test
    MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
    SIMPLETEST_DB: mysql://root:root@db/drupal_test
    SIMPLETEST_BASE_URL: http://localhost
  script:
    - composer install --no-progress
    - vendor/bin/phpunit -c web/core/phpunit.xml.dist web/modules/custom
  artifacts:
    when: always
    reports:
      junit: junit.xml          # test results shown in MR widget