gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/ci/index.md

stage	group	info	comments	description	type
Verify	Pipeline Execution	To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments	false	Learn how to use GitLab CI/CD, the GitLab built-in Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, and Continuous Delivery toolset to build, test, and deploy your application.	index

GitLab CI/CD (FREE)

GitLab CI/CD is a tool for software development using the continuous methodologies:

• Continuous Integration (CI)
• Continuous Delivery (CD)
• Continuous Deployment (CD)

NOTE: Out-of-the-box management systems can decrease hours spent on maintaining toolchains by 10% or more. Watch our "Mastering continuous software development" webcast to learn about continuous methods and how GitLab CI/CD can help you simplify and scale software development.

Use GitLab CI/CD to catch bugs and errors early in the development cycle. Ensure that all the code deployed to production complies with the code standards you established for your app.

GitLab CI/CD can automatically build, test, deploy, and monitor your applications by using Auto DevOps.

For a complete overview of these methodologies and GitLab CI/CD, read the Introduction to CI/CD with GitLab.

Video demonstration of continuous integration with GitLab CI/CD: Continuous Integration with GitLab (overview demo).

Concepts

GitLab CI/CD uses a number of concepts to describe and run your build and deploy.

Concept	Description
Pipelines	Structure your CI/CD process through pipelines.
CI/CD variables	Reuse values based on a variable/value key pair.
Environments	Deploy your application to different environments (for example, staging, production).
Job artifacts	Output, use, and reuse job artifacts.
Cache dependencies	Cache your dependencies for a faster execution.
GitLab Runner	Configure your own runners to execute your scripts.
Pipeline efficiency	Configure your pipelines to run quickly and efficiently.
Test cases	Create testing scenarios.

Configuration

GitLab CI/CD supports numerous configuration options:

Configuration	Description
Schedule pipelines	Schedule pipelines to run as often as you need.
Custom path for .gitlab-ci.yml	Define a custom path for the CI/CD configuration file.
Git submodules for CI/CD	Configure jobs for using Git submodules.
SSH keys for CI/CD	Using SSH keys in your CI pipelines.
Pipeline triggers	Trigger pipelines through the API.
Merge request pipelines	Design a pipeline structure for running a pipeline in merge requests.
Integrate with Kubernetes clusters	Connect your project to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or an existing Kubernetes cluster.
Optimize GitLab and GitLab Runner for large repositories	Recommended strategies for handling large repositories.
.gitlab-ci.yml full reference	All the attributes you can use with GitLab CI/CD.

Certain operations can only be performed according to the user and job permissions.

Features

GitLab CI/CD features, grouped by DevOps stage, include:

Feature	Description
Configure
Auto DevOps	Set up your app's entire lifecycle.
ChatOps	Trigger CI jobs from chat, with results sent back to the channel.
Connect to cloud services	Connect to cloud providers using OpenID Connect (OIDC) to retrieve temporary credentials to access services or secrets.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verify
Browser Performance Testing	Quickly determine the browser performance impact of pending code changes.
Load Performance Testing	Quickly determine the server performance impact of pending code changes.
CI services	Link Docker containers with your base image.
GitLab CI/CD for external repositories (PREMIUM)	Get the benefits of GitLab CI/CD combined with repositories in GitHub and Bitbucket Cloud.
Interactive Web Terminals (FREE SELF)	Open an interactive web terminal to debug the running jobs.
Review Apps	Configure GitLab CI/CD to preview code changes.
Unit test reports	Identify test failures directly on merge requests.
Using Docker images	Use GitLab and GitLab Runner with Docker to build and test applications.
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Release
Auto Deploy	Deploy your application to a production environment in a Kubernetes cluster.
Building Docker images	Maintain Docker-based projects using GitLab CI/CD.
Canary Deployments	Ship features to only a portion of your pods and let a percentage of your user base to visit the temporarily deployed feature.
Deploy boards	Check the current health and status of each CI/CD environment running on Kubernetes.
Feature Flags	Deploy your features behind Feature Flags.
GitLab Pages	Deploy static websites.
GitLab Releases	Add release notes to Git tags.
Cloud deployment	Deploy your application to a main cloud provider.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secure
Code Quality	Analyze your source code quality.
Container Scanning (ULTIMATE)	Check your Docker containers for known vulnerabilities.
Dependency Scanning (ULTIMATE)	Analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
License Compliance (ULTIMATE)	Search your project dependencies for their licenses.
Security Test reports (ULTIMATE)	Check for app vulnerabilities.

Examples

See the CI/CD examples page for example project code and tutorials for using GitLab CI/CD with various:

• App frameworks
• Languages
• Platforms

Administration

You can change the default behavior of GitLab CI/CD for:

• An entire GitLab instance in the CI/CD administration settings.
• Specific projects in the pipelines settings.

See also:

• Enable or disable GitLab CI/CD in a project.

Related topics

Learn more about GitLab CI/CD:

• Why you might choose GitLab CI/CD.
• Reasons you might migrate from another platform.
• Five teams that made the switch to GitLab CI/CD.
• If you use VS Code to edit your GitLab CI/CD configuration, the GitLab Workflow VS Code extension helps you validate your configuration and view your pipeline status.

See also the Why CI/CD? presentation.

Major version changes (breaking)

As GitLab CI/CD has evolved, certain breaking changes have been necessary.

14.0

• No breaking changes.

13.0

• Remove Backported os.Expand.
• Remove Fedora 29 package support.
• Remove macOS 32-bit support.
• Removed debug/jobs/list?v=1 endpoint.
• Remove support for array of strings when defining services for Docker executor.
• Remove --docker-services flag on register command.
• Remove legacy build directory caching.
• Remove FF_USE_LEGACY_VOLUMES_MOUNTING_ORDER feature flag.
• Remove support for Windows Server 1803.

12.0

• Use refspec to clone/fetch Git repository.
• Old cache configuration.
• Old metrics server configuration.
• Remove FF_K8S_USE_ENTRYPOINT_OVER_COMMAND.
• Remove Linux distributions that reach EOL.
• Update command line API for helper images.
• Remove old git clean flow.

11.0

• No breaking changes.

10.0

• No breaking changes.