Jobs dont start automatically after the manual job they "needs" is finished

GitLab CI/CD
1

Hi I’m trying to trigger the execution of say 10 jobs sequentially by making them depend on each others, using the keyword needs. (say job 2 says "need: [ job1 ], etc…)

Now I want a bit of control when all of this happens, so the first job is manual. using when:manual.

What I see is that what job are enabled to run is not recalculated farther than the first direct depency for a manual job and ANY of it’s children. This forces me to relaunch all jobs once after the first job has been launched, which is what I’m trying to avoid.

What I expect to see is that once I click on the one single manual job at the start of the dependency chain, all jobs run sequentially provided the first one ran successfully.

I’m doing this on gitlab 14.9 (yeah I know, but it’s not my choice)

here is an example

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image1423×393 24.1 KB

job1s2 is manual, all other are on_success. I’ve clicked to run job1s2, and job2s2 was enabled and ran, but no cascading effect happens and then enables and starts job3s2. To be able to run job3s2, I actually need to rerun job2s2, which will trigger a run of job3s2, and so.
This means I need to clik all jobs, and they all run twice, which is not great at all…

any help welcome.

Here is a sample gitlab-ci.yml to reproduce

stages:
    - stage1
    - stage2
    - stage3


job1s1 :
    stage: stage1
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls

job1s2 :
    stage: stage2
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls

    when: manual
    needs: 
      - job1s1


job2s2 :
    stage: stage2
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    when: on_success
    needs: 
      - job1s2


job3s2 :
    stage: stage2
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    when: on_success
    needs: 
      - job2s2

job4s2 :
    stage: stage2
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    when: on_success
    needs: 
      - job3s2



job1s3 :
    stage: stage3
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls

    needs: 
      - job1s1


job2s3 :
    stage: stage3
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    needs: 
      - job1s3


job3s3 :
    stage: stage3
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    needs: 
      - job2s3

job4s3 :
    stage: stage3
    tags : 
      - linux
    script:
      - ls
    needs: 
      - job3s3
2

Change when:manual for the first dependent job (job2s2) to when:always . This keeps it eligible to run even though it’s manual.
Keep when:on_success for all other dependent jobs. Once job2s2 runs, they’ll chain react after their immediate dependencies succeed.

3

thanks for your reply, I’m sorry, but job2s2 is not “when manual”, it’s already “when : on_sucess”, and this does not achieve my goal. My goal is to have job2s2 run only if job1s2 is sucessfull, “when always” does not achieve that…