How to initialize GitLab docker postgres service with schema and data

GitLab CI/CD
,
1

How do you initialize the postgres service on GitLab Docker CI?

In a Dockerfile you copy .sql files to docker-entrypoint-initdb.d

Example:

FROM postgres:9.5.9

... (other stuff here)

COPY schemas.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/1.schemas.sql
COPY test-data.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/2.test-data.sql

WORKDIR /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d

Is there an equivalent in GitLab Docker CI? How can I initialize and setup my postgres database service so that I can have the correct database to test against in my different CI builds/stages.

image: node:latest

services: ["postgres:latest"]

# Needs correct schema to test against, but uses base clean postgres service instead
run_unit_tests:
  stage: test
  script:
    - npm i
    - npm test
2

Did you figure out a solution for this?

3

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/3210. This is currently not possible afaik.

1 Like
4

Yes since you have access to that service at the time of the job you initialize in the script section of the job

5

Hello, but then you need to write specific code for the initialization or have psql installed in the build image.

6

Correct

7

@alallier how did you figure out how to initialize your db? I added postgres as a service, but when I try to find it using which psql it’s not available and my build fails.

What exactly did you do?

8

I know this is an old one, but for anyone out there still facing this problem, the workaround I used for this was to install the psql tool in a ‘before_script’ block and execute my init script there.

before_script:
- yum update -y && yum install postgresql -y
- export PGPASSWORD=$POSTGRES_PASSWORD
- psql -h “postgres” -U “$POSTGRES_USER” -d “$POSTGRES_DB” -f ./docker/postgres/init.sql

The postgres variables are defined in a block “variables” in the beginning of my yaml, like:

variables:
POSTGRES_DB: nice_marmot
POSTGRES_USER: runner
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: “”

1 Like