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Environments allow control of the continuous deployment of your software,
all within GitLab.
## Introduction
There are many stages required in the software development process before the software is ready
for public consumption.
For example:
1. Develop your code.
1. Test your code.
1. Deploy your code into a testing or staging environment before you release it to the public.
This helps find bugs in your software, and also in the deployment process as well.
GitLab CI/CD is capable of not only testing or building your projects, but also
deploying them in your infrastructure, with the added benefit of giving you a
way to track your deployments. In other words, you will always know what is
currently being deployed or has been deployed on your servers.
It's important to know that:
- Environments are like tags for your CI jobs, describing where code gets deployed.
- Deployments are created when [jobs](../yaml/README.md#introduction) deploy versions of code to environments,
so every environment can have one or more deployments.
GitLab:
- Provides a full history of your deployments for each environment.
- Keeps track of your deployments, so you always know what is currently being deployed on your
servers.
If you have a deployment service such as [Kubernetes](../../user/project/clusters/index.md)
associated with your project, you can use it to assist with your deployments, and
can even access a [web terminal](#web-terminals) for your environment from within GitLab!
## Configuring environments
Configuring environments involves:
1. Understanding how [pipelines](../pipelines/index.md) work.
1. Defining environments in your project's [`.gitlab-ci.yml`](../yaml/README.md) file.
1. Creating a job configured to deploy your application. For example, a deploy job configured with [`environment`](../yaml/README.md#environment) to deploy your application to a [Kubernetes cluster](../../user/project/clusters/index.md).
The rest of this section illustrates how to configure environments and deployments using
an example scenario. It assumes you have already:
- Created a [project](../../gitlab-basics/create-project.md) in GitLab.
- Set up [a Runner](../runners/README.md).
In the scenario:
- We are developing an application.
- We want to run tests and build our app on all branches.
- Our default branch is `master`.
- We deploy the app only when a pipeline on `master` branch is run.
### Defining environments
Let's consider the following `.gitlab-ci.yml` example:
```yaml
stages:
- test
- build
- deploy
test:
stage: test
script: echo "Running tests"
build:
stage: build
script: echo "Building the app"
deploy_staging:
stage: deploy
script:
- echo "Deploy to staging server"
environment:
name: staging
url: https://staging.example.com
only:
- master
```
We have defined three [stages](../yaml/README.md#stages):
-`test`
-`build`
-`deploy`
The jobs assigned to these stages will run in this order. If any job fails, then
the pipeline fails and jobs that are assigned to the next stage won't run.
In our case:
- The `test` job will run first.
- Then the `build` job.
- Lastly the `deploy_staging` job.
With this configuration, we:
- Check that the tests pass.
- Ensure that our app is able to be built successfully.
- Lastly we deploy to the staging server.
NOTE: **Note:**
The `environment` keyword defines where the app is deployed.
The environment `name` and `url` is exposed in various places
within GitLab. Each time a job that has an environment specified
succeeds, a deployment is recorded, along with the Git SHA, and environment name.
CAUTION: **Caution**:
Some characters are not allowed in environment names. Use only letters,
numbers, spaces, and `-`, `_`, `/`, `{`, `}`, or `.`. Also, it must not start nor end with `/`.
In summary, with the above `.gitlab-ci.yml` we have achieved the following:
- All branches will run the `test` and `build` jobs.
- The `deploy_staging` job will run [only](../yaml/README.md#onlyexcept-basic) on the `master`
branch, which means all merge requests that are created from branches don't
get deployed to the staging server.
- When a merge request is merged, all jobs will run and the `deploy_staging`
job will deploy our code to a staging server while the deployment
will be recorded in an environment named `staging`.
#### Environment variables and Runner
Starting with GitLab 8.15, the environment name is exposed to the Runner in
two forms:
-`$CI_ENVIRONMENT_NAME`. The name given in `.gitlab-ci.yml` (with any variables
expanded).
-`$CI_ENVIRONMENT_SLUG`. A "cleaned-up" version of the name, suitable for use in URLs,
DNS, etc.
If you change the name of an existing environment, the:
-`$CI_ENVIRONMENT_NAME` variable will be updated with the new environment name.
-`$CI_ENVIRONMENT_SLUG` variable will remain unchanged to prevent unintended side
effects.
Starting with GitLab 9.3, the environment URL is exposed to the Runner via
`$CI_ENVIRONMENT_URL`. The URL is expanded from either:
-`.gitlab-ci.yml`.
- The external URL from the environment if not defined in `.gitlab-ci.yml`.
#### Set dynamic environment URLs after a job finishes
> [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/17066) in GitLab 12.9.
In a job script, you can specify a static [environment URL](#using-the-environment-url).
However, there may be times when you want a dynamic URL. For example,
if you deploy a Review App to an external hosting
service that generates a random URL per deployment, like `https://94dd65b.amazonaws.com/qa-lambda-1234567`,
you don't know the URL before the deployment script finishes.
If you want to use the environment URL in GitLab, you would have to update it manually.
To address this problem, you can configure a deployment job to report back a set of
variables, including the URL that was dynamically-generated by the external service.
GitLab supports [dotenv](https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv) file as the format,
and expands the `environment:url` value with variables defined in the dotenv file.
To use this feature, specify the
[`artifacts:reports:dotenv`](../pipelines/job_artifacts.md#artifactsreportsdotenv) keyword in `.gitlab-ci.yml`.
For an overview, see [Set dynamic URLs after a job finished](https://youtu.be/70jDXtOf4Ig).
##### Example of setting dynamic environment URLs
The following example shows a Review App that creates a new environment
per merge request. The `review` job is triggered by every push, and
creates or updates an environment named `review/your-branch-name`.
The environment URL is set to `$DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL`:
```yaml
review:
script:
- DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL=$(deploy-script) # In script, get the environment URL.
- echo "DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL=$DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL" >> deploy.env # Add the value to a dotenv file.
artifacts:
reports:
dotenv: deploy.env # Report back dotenv file to rails.
environment:
name: review/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
url: $DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL # and set the variable produced in script to `environment:url`
on_stop: stop_review
stop_review:
script:
- ./teardown-environment
when: manual
environment:
name: review/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
action: stop
```
As soon as the `review` job finishes, GitLab updates the `review/your-branch-name`
environment's URL.
It parses the report artifact `deploy.env`, registers a list of variables as runtime-created,
uses it for expanding `environment:url: $DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL` and sets it to the environment URL.
You can also specify a static part of the URL at `environment:url:`, such as
`https://$DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL`. If the value of `DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL` is
`123.awesome.com`, the final result will be `https://123.awesome.com`.
The assigned URL for the `review/your-branch-name` environment is visible in the UI.
[See where the environment URL is displayed](#using-the-environment-url).
> **Notes:**
>
> - `stop_review` doesn't generate a dotenv report artifact, so it won't recognize the `DYNAMIC_ENVIRONMENT_URL` variable. Therefore you should not set `environment:url:` in the `stop_review` job.
> - If the environment URL is not valid (for example, the URL is malformed), the system doesn't update the environment URL.
### Configuring manual deployments
Adding `when: manual` to an automatically executed job's configuration converts it to
a job requiring manual action.
To expand on the [previous example](#defining-environments), the following includes
another job that deploys our app to a production server and is
tracked by a `production` environment.
The `.gitlab-ci.yml` file for this is as follows:
```yaml
stages:
- test
- build
- deploy
test:
stage: test
script: echo "Running tests"
build:
stage: build
script: echo "Building the app"
deploy_staging:
stage: deploy
script:
- echo "Deploy to staging server"
environment:
name: staging
url: https://staging.example.com
only:
- master
deploy_prod:
stage: deploy
script:
- echo "Deploy to production server"
environment:
name: production
url: https://example.com
when: manual
only:
- master
```
The `when: manual` action:
- Exposes a "play" button in GitLab's UI for that job.
- Means the `deploy_prod` job will only be triggered when the "play" button is clicked.
You can find the "play" button in the pipelines, environments, deployments, and jobs views.
Add a [button to the Monitoring dashboard](../../user/project/operations/linking_to_an_external_dashboard.md) linking directly to your existing external dashboards.
#### Embedding metrics in GitLab Flavored Markdown
Metric charts can be embedded within GitLab Flavored Markdown. See [Embedding Metrics within GitLab Flavored Markdown](../../user/project/integrations/prometheus.md#embedding-metric-charts-within-gitlab-flavored-markdown) for more details.
### Web terminals
> Web terminals were added in GitLab 8.15 and are only available to project Maintainers and Owners.
If you deploy to your environments with the help of a deployment service (for example,
the [Kubernetes integration](../../user/project/clusters/index.md)), GitLab can open
a terminal session to your environment.
This is a powerful feature that allows you to debug issues without leaving the comfort
of your web browser. To enable it, just follow the instructions given in the service integration
documentation.
Once enabled, your environments will gain a "terminal" button:
You can also access the terminal button from the page for a specific environment:
Wherever you find it, clicking the button will take you to a separate page to
> - [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/2112) in [GitLab Premium](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/) 9.4.
> - [Scoping for environment variables was moved to Core](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/merge_requests/30779) to Core in GitLab 12.2.
You can limit the environment scope of a variable by
defining which environments it can be available for.
Wildcards can be used, and the default environment scope is `*`, which means
any jobs will have this variable, not matter if an environment is defined or
not.
For example, if the environment scope is `production`, then only the jobs
having the environment `production` defined would have this specific variable.
Wildcards (`*`) can be used along with the environment name, therefore if the
environment scope is `review/*` then any jobs with environment names starting
with `review/` would have that particular variable.
Some GitLab features can behave differently for each environment.
For example, you can
[create a secret variable to be injected only into a production environment](../variables/README.md#limit-the-environment-scopes-of-environment-variables).
In most cases, these features use the _environment specs_ mechanism, which offers
an efficient way to implement scoping within each environment group.
Let's say there are four environments:
-`production`
-`staging`
-`review/feature-1`
-`review/feature-2`
Each environment can be matched with the following environment spec:
