Missing variable in nested multi-project pipeline

GitLab CI/CD
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1

Hi, I have got 3 projects, which are chain triggered. I want to pass variable from first project to third and facing strange behavior.

So, in Project A I m creating variable VARIABLE_1 with value hello_world and passing it to Project B

Project A .gitlab-ci.yaml:

stages:
- trigger_downstream

variables:
  VARIABLE_1:
    value: "hello_world"

".trigger_env":
  stage: trigger_downstream
  inherit:
    variables: 
      - VARIABLE_1

trigger_downstream:
  extends: ".trigger_env"
  trigger:
    project: 'Project B'
    branch: 'main'

In Project B, I ve echod $VARIABLE_1 and got hello_world output. This means our variable is in the env. So i am passing it to the Project C.

Project B .gitlab-ci.yaml:

stages:
- printenv
- trigger_downstream

printenv:
  stage: printenv
  script:
    - echo "VARIABLE_1 = $VARIABLE_1"

".trigger_env":
  stage: trigger_downstream
  inherit:
    variables: 
      - VARIABLE_1

trigger_downstream:
  extends: ".trigger_env"
  trigger:
    project: 'Project C'
    branch: 'main'

In Project C , the output of echo is:

VARIABLE_1 =

There is no VARIABLE_1 in the env.
Project C .gitlab-ci.yaml:

stages:
- printenv

printenv:
  stage: printenv
  script:
    - echo "VARIABLE_1 = $VARIABLE_1"

So i ve managed to workaround this with creating another variable in Project B:

variables:
  VARIABLE_2:
    value: "$VARIABLE_1"

And then passing it to Project C:

".trigger_env":
  stage: trigger_downstream
  inherit:
    variables: 
      - VARIABLE_1
      - VARIABLE_2

In this case we save our VARIABLE_1 value, so we still can acess its value in Project C.
But this is a bad solution in case you ve got a lot of variables in your CI, which you want to pass between pipelines. So, i ve got 2 questions:

  • Is this behavior intentional or am i missing something ?
  • Did anyone faced this problem, if so did you managed to find better workarounds ?