How to get ENV variable set on build step based on deploy ENV

GitLab CI/CD
1

How to get build ENV variables set based on Deploy environments?

During the build step, there is a need to pass ENVIRONMENT variables, for the build as well. On branch develop, deploy environment is dev, for the build step we need to pass PROJECT_ENV as development, on branch release, deploy environment is staging, for the build step, PROJECT_ENV should be set as staging.

setting the PROJECT_ENV is not sufficient

global variables dont show up in build step and if environment is not declared. Is there an obvious solution I am missing here with dynamic variables?

I can only think of introducing CI Triggers to invoke a pipeline with a variable name

build:backend:
  stage: build
  image: node:12
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "develop"'
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "release"'
  script:
    - echo "NX_PROJECT_ENV=$NX_PROJECT_ENV" > .env

build:frontend:
  stage: build
  image: node:12
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "develop"'
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "release"'
  script:
    - echo "NX_PROJECT_ENV=$NX_PROJECT_ENV" > .env

Deploy Dev:
  stage: deploy
  environment:
    name: dev
    url: https://${BACKEND_DOMAIN}
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "develop"'
2

Hi @sairam-oe

when you create the environment variable in your project settings you can give that variable a scope which is the environment that the variable should be defined in. For your develop branch, if there isn’t and environment defined in .gitlab-ci.yml you can set the variable to be scoped in All environments.

3

I setup for ‘dev’ environment, but the variable is not picking it up since there is no way to link develop with dev unless I setup that mapping via ‘environment’ field.

4

If you make your environment variable for dev scoped to “all” environments, then it will be picked up by any environment except your named environments.

However, you can also use environment:action here, for example:

build:
  stage: build
  image: node:12
  script:
    - echo "NX_PROJECT_ENV=$NX_PROJECT_ENV" > .env

build:dev:
  <<: *build
  variables:
    PROJECT_ENV: dev
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "develop"'
  environment:
    name: dev
    action: prepare

build:production:
  <<: *build
  variables:
    PROJECT_ENV: staging
 rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "release"'
  environment:
    name: staging
    action: prepare 

build:production:
  <<: *build
  variables:
    PROJECT_ENV: production
 rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "release"'
  environment:
    name: production
    action: prepare

If I was doing something like this, I would be inclined to make two small changes:

  1. Use YAML anchors for the rules and environment names
  2. Use $CI_ENVIRONMENT_NAME instead of PROJECT_ENV.
2 Likes
5

Thanks @snim2, I ended up using YAML anchors to achieve this.

1 Like