GitLab CI template with include and inputs fails: “Given inputs not defined in the spec section of the included configuration file”

GitLab CI/CD
,
1

Hi everyone,

I’m creating a separate repository to store GitLab CI job templates. My goal is to use the include feature so that other projects can easily add a default job, while still allowing them to configure certain variables through inputs.

Here’s what I’ve done:

In the template project (templates/pre-build.gitlab-ci.yml):

spec:
  inputs:
    PRE_BUILD_MESSAGE:
      type: string
      description: "Message to print in before_script"
      default: "Default PRE BUILD message"

stages:
  - pre_build

pre_build:
  image: maven:3.8-openjdk-17
  stage: pre_build
  before_script:
    - echo "$PRE_BUILD_MESSAGE"
  script:
    - mvn clean validate -DskipTests
  only:
    - merge_requests

In the target project:

include:
  - project: my-group/general-ci-cd
    ref: main
    file: templates/pre-build.gitlab-ci.yml
    inputs: 
      PRE_BUILD_MESSAGE: "Test message"

stages:
  - pre_build
  - package

package: 
  stage: package
  before_script: 
    - echo "Building Java application"
  script: 
    - mvn clean package -DskipTests
  only:
    - dev
    - main

However, when I run the pipeline, I get this error:

`templates/pre-build.gitlab-ci.yml`: Given inputs not defined in the `spec` section of the included configuration file

I believe I defined the spec correctly, but the error persists.
Is there something I’m missing about how inputs and spec should be structured?

2

When using spec: the ci yml needs to get split into two logical yaml files:

# header section
spec:
  inputs:
    as:
      value: pre_build

---
# ci template file section. $[[ inputs... ]] are processed in this template section.

$[[ inputs.as ]]:
  script:
  - ...
1 Like
3

Thanks, it helped.