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Customizing Auto DevOps

While Auto DevOps provides great defaults to get you started, you can customize almost everything to fit your needs; from custom buildpacks, to Dockerfiles, Helm charts, or even copying the complete CI/CD configuration into your project to enable staging and canary deployments, and more.

Custom buildpacks

If the automatic buildpack detection fails for your project, or if you want to use a custom buildpack, you can override the buildpack(s) using a project variable or a .buildpacks file in your project:

Project variable - Create a project variable BUILDPACK_URL with the URL of the buildpack to use.
.buildpacks file - Add a file in your project's repo called .buildpacks and add the URL of the buildpack to use on a line in the file. If you want to use multiple buildpacks, you can enter them in, one on each line.

The buildpack URL can point to either a Git repository URL or a tarball URL. For Git repositories, it is possible to point to a specific Git reference (for example, commit SHA, tag name, or branch name) by appending #<ref> to the Git repository URL. For example:

The tag v142: https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby.git#v142.
The branch mybranch: https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby.git#mybranch.
The commit SHA f97d8a8ab49: https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-ruby.git#f97d8a8ab49.

Multiple buildpacks

Using multiple buildpacks isn't fully supported by Auto DevOps because, when using the .buildpacks file, Auto Test will not work.

The buildpack heroku-buildpack-multi, which is used under the hood to parse the .buildpacks file, doesn't provide the necessary commands bin/test-compile and bin/test.

If your goal is to use only a single custom buildpack, you should provide the project variable BUILDPACK_URL instead.

Custom `Dockerfile`

If your project has a Dockerfile in the root of the project repo, Auto DevOps will build a Docker image based on the Dockerfile rather than using buildpacks. This can be much faster and result in smaller images, especially if your Dockerfile is based on Alpine.

Passing arguments to `docker build`

Arguments can be passed to the docker build command using the AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_EXTRA_ARGS project variable.

For example, to build a Docker image based on based on the ruby:alpine instead of the default ruby:latest:

Set AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_EXTRA_ARGS to --build-arg=RUBY_VERSION=alpine.

Add the following to a custom Dockerfile:

ARG RUBY_VERSION=latest
FROM ruby:$RUBY_VERSION

# ... put your stuff here

NOTE: Note: Passing in complex values (newlines and spaces, for example) will likely cause escaping issues due to the way this argument is used in Auto DevOps. Consider using Base64 encoding of such values to avoid this problem.

CAUTION: Warning: Avoid passing secrets as Docker build arguments if possible, as they may be persisted in your image. See this discussion for details.

Passing secrets to `docker build`

Introduced in GitLab 12.3, but available in versions 11.9 and above.

CI environment variables can be passed as build secrets to the docker build command by listing them comma separated by name in the AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_FORWARDED_CI_VARIABLES variable. For example, in order to forward the variables CI_COMMIT_SHA and CI_ENVIRONMENT_NAME, one would set AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_FORWARDED_CI_VARIABLES to CI_COMMIT_SHA,CI_ENVIRONMENT_NAME.

Unlike build arguments, these are not persisted by Docker in the final image (though you can still persist them yourself, so be careful).

In projects:

Without a Dockerfile, these are available automatically as environment variables.
With a Dockerfile, the following is required:
1. Activate the experimental Dockerfile syntax by adding the following to the top of the file:
```
# syntax = docker/dockerfile:experimental
```
2. To make secrets available in any RUN $COMMAND in the Dockerfile, mount the secret file and source it prior to running $COMMAND:
```
RUN --mount=type=secret,id=auto-devops-build-secrets . /run/secrets/auto-devops-build-secrets && $COMMAND
```

NOTE: Note: When AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_FORWARDED_CI_VARIABLES is set, Auto DevOps enables the experimental Docker BuildKit feature to use the --secret flag.

Custom Helm Chart

Auto DevOps uses Helm to deploy your application to Kubernetes. You can override the Helm chart used by bundling up a chart into your project repo or by specifying a project variable:

Bundled chart - If your project has a ./chart directory with a Chart.yaml file in it, Auto DevOps will detect the chart and use it instead of the default one. This can be a great way to control exactly how your application is deployed.
Project variable - Create a project variable AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART with the URL of a custom chart to use or create two project variables AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY with the URL of a custom chart repository and AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART with the path to the chart.

Customize values for Helm Chart

Introduced in GitLab 12.6, .gitlab/auto-deploy-values.yaml will be used by default for Helm upgrades.

You can override the default values in the values.yaml file in the default Helm chart. This can be achieved by either:

Adding a file named .gitlab/auto-deploy-values.yaml to your repository. It will be automatically used if found.
Adding a file with a different name or path to the repository, and set the HELM_UPGRADE_VALUES_FILE environment variable with the path and name.

NOTE: Note: For GitLab 12.5 and earlier, the HELM_UPGRADE_EXTRA_ARGS environment variable can be used to override the default chart values. To do so, set HELM_UPGRADE_EXTRA_ARGS to --values my-values.yaml.

Custom Helm chart per environment

You can specify the use of a custom Helm chart per environment by scoping the environment variable to the desired environment. See Limiting environment scopes of variables.

Customizing `.gitlab-ci.yml`

Auto DevOps is completely customizable because the Auto DevOps template:

Is just an implementation of a .gitlab-ci.yml file.
Uses only features available to any implementation of .gitlab-ci.yml.

If you want to modify the CI/CD pipeline used by Auto DevOps, you can include the template and customize as needed. To do this, add a .gitlab-ci.yml file to the root of your repository containing the following:

include:
  - template: Auto-DevOps.gitlab-ci.yml

Then add any extra changes you want. Your additions will be merged with the Auto DevOps template using the behaviour described for include.

It is also possible to copy and paste the contents of the Auto DevOps template into your project and edit this as needed. You may prefer to do it that way if you want to specifically remove any part of it.

Customizing the Kubernetes namespace

Introduced in GitLab 12.6.

For non-GitLab-managed clusters, the namespace can be customized using .gitlab-ci.yml by specifying environment:kubernetes:namespace. For example, the following configuration overrides the namespace used for production deployments:

include:
  - template: Auto-DevOps.gitlab-ci.yml

production:
  environment:
    kubernetes:
      namespace: production

When deploying to a custom namespace with Auto DevOps, the service account provided with the cluster needs at least the edit role within the namespace.

If the service account can create namespaces, then the namespace can be created on-demand.
Otherwise, the namespace must exist prior to deployment.

Using components of Auto DevOps

If you only require a subset of the features offered by Auto DevOps, you can include individual Auto DevOps jobs into your own .gitlab-ci.yml. Each component job relies on a stage that should be defined in the .gitlab-ci.yml that includes the template.

For example, to make use of Auto Build, you can add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml:

stages:
  - build

include:
  - template: Jobs/Build.gitlab-ci.yml

Consult the Auto DevOps template for information on available jobs.

PostgreSQL database support

In order to support applications that require a database, PostgreSQL is provisioned by default. The credentials to access the database are preconfigured, but can be customized by setting the associated variables. These credentials can be used for defining a DATABASE_URL of the format:

postgres://user:password@postgres-host:postgres-port/postgres-database

Upgrading PostgresSQL

CAUTION: Deprecation The variable AUTO_DEVOPS_POSTGRES_CHANNEL that controls default provisioned PostgreSQL currently defaults to 1. This is scheduled to change to 2 in GitLab 13.0.

The version of the chart used to provision PostgreSQL:

Is 0.7.1 in GitLab 12.8 and earlier.
Can be set to from 0.7.1 to 8.2.1 in GitLab 12.9 and later.

GitLab encourages users to migrate their database to the newer PostgreSQL.

To use the new PostgreSQL:

New projects can set the AUTO_DEVOPS_POSTGRES_CHANNEL variable to 2.
Old projects can be upgraded by following the guide to upgrading PostgresSQL.

Using external PostgreSQL database providers

While Auto DevOps provides out-of-the-box support for a PostgreSQL container for production environments, for some use-cases it may not be sufficiently secure or resilient and you may wish to use an external managed provider for PostgreSQL. For example, AWS Relational Database Service.

You will need to define environment-scoped variables for POSTGRES_ENABLED and DATABASE_URL in your project's CI/CD settings.

To achieve this:

Disable the built-in PostgreSQL installation for the required environments using scoped environment variables. For this use case, it's likely that only production will need to be added to this list as the builtin PostgreSQL setup for Review Apps and staging will be sufficient as a high availability setup is not required.
Define the DATABASE_URL CI variable as a scoped environment variable that will be available to your application. This should be a URL in the following format:
```
postgres://user:password@postgres-host:postgres-port/postgres-database
```

You will need to ensure that your Kubernetes cluster has network access to wherever PostgreSQL is hosted.

Environment variables

The following variables can be used for setting up the Auto DevOps domain, providing a custom Helm chart, or scaling your application. PostgreSQL can also be customized, and you can easily use a custom buildpack.

Build and deployment

The following table lists variables related to building and deploying applications.

Variable	Description
`ADDITIONAL_HOSTS`	Fully qualified domain names specified as a comma-separated list that are added to the Ingress hosts.
`<ENVIRONMENT>_ADDITIONAL_HOSTS`	For a specific environment, the fully qualified domain names specified as a comma-separated list that are added to the Ingress hosts. This takes precedence over `ADDITIONAL_HOSTS`.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_CNB_ENABLED`	When set to a non-empty value and no `Dockerfile` is present, Auto Build builds your application using Cloud Native Buildpacks instead of Herokuish. More details.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_EXTRA_ARGS`	Extra arguments to be passed to the `docker build` command. Note that using quotes will not prevent word splitting. More details.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_BUILD_IMAGE_FORWARDED_CI_VARIABLES`	A comma-separated list of CI variable names to be passed to the `docker build` command as secrets.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART`	Helm Chart used to deploy your apps. Defaults to the one provided by GitLab.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY`	Helm Chart repository used to search for charts. Defaults to `https://charts.gitlab.io`.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY_NAME`	From GitLab 11.11, used to set the name of the Helm repository. Defaults to `gitlab`.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY_USERNAME`	From GitLab 11.11, used to set a username to connect to the Helm repository. Defaults to no credentials. Also set `AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY_PASSWORD`.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY_PASSWORD`	From GitLab 11.11, used to set a password to connect to the Helm repository. Defaults to no credentials. Also set `AUTO_DEVOPS_CHART_REPOSITORY_USERNAME`.
`AUTO_DEVOPS_MODSECURITY_SEC_RULE_ENGINE`	From GitLab 12.5, used in combination with Modsecurity feature flag to toggle Modsecurity's `SecRuleEngine` behavior. Defaults to `DetectionOnly`.
`BUILDPACK_URL`	Buildpack's full URL. Can point to either a Git repository URL or a tarball URL.
`CANARY_ENABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to define a deploy policy for canary environments.
`CANARY_PRODUCTION_REPLICAS`	Number of canary replicas to deploy for Canary Deployments in the production environment. Takes precedence over `CANARY_REPLICAS`. Defaults to 1.
`CANARY_REPLICAS`	Number of canary replicas to deploy for Canary Deployments. Defaults to 1.
`HELM_RELEASE_NAME`	From GitLab 12.1, allows the `helm` release name to be overridden. Can be used to assign unique release names when deploying multiple projects to a single namespace.
`HELM_UPGRADE_VALUES_FILE`	From GitLab 12.6, allows the `helm upgrade` values file to be overridden. Defaults to `.gitlab/auto-deploy-values.yaml`.
`HELM_UPGRADE_EXTRA_ARGS`	From GitLab 11.11, allows extra arguments in `helm` commands when deploying the application. Note that using quotes will not prevent word splitting. Tip: you can use this variable to customize the Auto Deploy Helm chart by applying custom override values with `--values my-values.yaml`.
`INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE`	From GitLab 11.4, if present, can be used to enable an incremental rollout of your application for the production environment. Set to `manual` for manual deployment jobs or `timed` for automatic rollout deployments with a 5 minute delay each one.
`K8S_SECRET_*`	From GitLab 11.7, any variable prefixed with `K8S_SECRET_` will be made available by Auto DevOps as environment variables to the deployed application.
`KUBE_INGRESS_BASE_DOMAIN`	From GitLab 11.8, can be used to set a domain per cluster. See cluster domains for more information.
`PRODUCTION_REPLICAS`	Number of replicas to deploy in the production environment. Takes precedence over `REPLICAS` and defaults to 1. For zero downtime upgrades, set to 2 or greater.
`REPLICAS`	Number of replicas to deploy. Defaults to 1.
`ROLLOUT_RESOURCE_TYPE`	From GitLab 11.9, allows specification of the resource type being deployed when using a custom Helm chart. Default value is `deployment`.
`ROLLOUT_STATUS_DISABLED`	From GitLab 12.0, used to disable rollout status check because it doesn't support all resource types, for example, `cronjob`.
`STAGING_ENABLED`	From GitLab 10.8, used to define a deploy policy for staging and production environments.

TIP: Tip: Set up the replica variables using a project variable and scale your application by just redeploying it!

CAUTION: Caution: You should not scale your application using Kubernetes directly. This can cause confusion with Helm not detecting the change, and subsequent deploys with Auto DevOps can undo your changes.

Database

The following table lists variables related to the database.

Variable	Description
`DB_INITIALIZE`	From GitLab 11.4, used to specify the command to run to initialize the application's PostgreSQL database. Runs inside the application pod.
`DB_MIGRATE`	From GitLab 11.4, used to specify the command to run to migrate the application's PostgreSQL database. Runs inside the application pod.
`POSTGRES_ENABLED`	Whether PostgreSQL is enabled. Defaults to `"true"`. Set to `false` to disable the automatic deployment of PostgreSQL.
`POSTGRES_USER`	The PostgreSQL user. Defaults to `user`. Set it to use a custom username.
`POSTGRES_PASSWORD`	The PostgreSQL password. Defaults to `testing-password`. Set it to use a custom password.
`POSTGRES_DB`	The PostgreSQL database name. Defaults to the value of `$CI_ENVIRONMENT_SLUG`. Set it to use a custom database name.
`POSTGRES_VERSION`	Tag for the `postgres` Docker image to use. Defaults to `9.6.2`.

Security tools

The following table lists variables related to security tools.

Variable	Description
`SAST_CONFIDENCE_LEVEL`	Minimum confidence level of security issues you want to be reported; `1` for Low, `2` for Medium, `3` for High. Defaults to `3`.

Disable jobs

The following table lists variables used to disable jobs.

Variable	Description
`CODE_QUALITY_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `codequality` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`CONTAINER_SCANNING_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `sast:container` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`DAST_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `dast` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`DEPENDENCY_SCANNING_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `dependency_scanning` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`LICENSE_MANAGEMENT_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `license_management` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`PERFORMANCE_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `performance` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`REVIEW_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `review` and the manual `review:stop` job. If the variable is present, these jobs will not be created.
`SAST_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `sast` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.
`TEST_DISABLED`	From GitLab 11.0, used to disable the `test` job. If the variable is present, the job will not be created.

Application secret variables

Introduced in GitLab 11.7.

Some applications need to define secret variables that are accessible by the deployed application. Auto DevOps detects variables where the key starts with K8S_SECRET_ and make these prefixed variables available to the deployed application, as environment variables.

To configure your application variables:

Go to your project's Settings > CI/CD, then expand the section called Variables.
Create a CI Variable, ensuring the key is prefixed with K8S_SECRET_. For example, you can create a variable with key K8S_SECRET_RAILS_MASTER_KEY.
Run an Auto Devops pipeline either by manually creating a new pipeline or by pushing a code change to GitLab.

Auto DevOps pipelines will take your application secret variables to populate a Kubernetes secret. This secret is unique per environment. When deploying your application, the secret is loaded as environment variables in the container running the application. Following the example above, you can see the secret below containing the RAILS_MASTER_KEY variable.

$ kubectl get secret production-secret -n minimal-ruby-app-54 -o yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  RAILS_MASTER_KEY: MTIzNC10ZXN0
kind: Secret
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: 2018-12-20T01:48:26Z
  name: production-secret
  namespace: minimal-ruby-app-54
  resourceVersion: "429422"
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/minimal-ruby-app-54/secrets/production-secret
  uid: 57ac2bfd-03f9-11e9-b812-42010a9400e4
type: Opaque

Environment variables are generally considered immutable in a Kubernetes pod. Therefore, if you update an application secret without changing any code then manually create a new pipeline, you will find that any running application pods will not have the updated secrets. In this case, you can either push a code update to GitLab to force the Kubernetes Deployment to recreate pods or manually delete running pods to cause Kubernetes to create new pods with updated secrets.

NOTE: Note: Variables with multiline values are not currently supported due to limitations with the current Auto DevOps scripting environment.

Advanced replica variables setup

Apart from the two replica-related variables for production mentioned above, you can also use others for different environments.

There's a very specific mapping between Kubernetes' label named track, GitLab CI/CD environment names, and the replicas environment variable. The general rule is: TRACK_ENV_REPLICAS. Where:

TRACK: The capitalized value of the track Kubernetes label in the Helm Chart app definition. If not set, it will not be taken into account to the variable name.
ENV: The capitalized environment name of the deploy job that is set in .gitlab-ci.yml.

That way, you can define your own TRACK_ENV_REPLICAS variables with which you will be able to scale the pod's replicas easily.

In the example below, the environment's name is qa and it deploys the track foo which would result in looking for the FOO_QA_REPLICAS environment variable:

QA testing:
  stage: deploy
  environment:
    name: qa
  script:
  - deploy foo

The track foo being referenced would also need to be defined in the application's Helm chart, like:

replicaCount: 1
image:
  repository: gitlab.example.com/group/project
  tag: stable
  pullPolicy: Always
  secrets:
    - name: gitlab-registry
application:
  track: foo
  tier: web
service:
  enabled: true
  name: web
  type: ClusterIP
  url: http://my.host.com/
  externalPort: 5000
  internalPort: 5000

Deploy policy for staging and production environments

Introduced in GitLab 10.8.

TIP: Tip: You can also set this inside your project's settings.

The normal behavior of Auto DevOps is to use Continuous Deployment, pushing automatically to the production environment every time a new pipeline is run on the default branch. However, there are cases where you might want to use a staging environment and deploy to production manually. For this scenario, the STAGING_ENABLED environment variable was introduced.

If STAGING_ENABLED is defined in your project (e.g., set STAGING_ENABLED to 1 as a CI/CD variable), then the application will be automatically deployed to a staging environment, and a production_manual job will be created for you when you're ready to manually deploy to production.

Deploy policy for canary environments (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab 11.0.

A canary environment can be used before any changes are deployed to production.

If CANARY_ENABLED is defined in your project (e.g., set CANARY_ENABLED to 1 as a CI/CD variable) then two manual jobs will be created:

canary which will deploy the application to the canary environment
production_manual which is to be used by you when you're ready to manually deploy to production.

Incremental rollout to production (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab 10.8.

TIP: Tip: You can also set this inside your project's settings.

When you have a new version of your app to deploy in production, you may want to use an incremental rollout to replace just a few pods with the latest code. This will allow you to first check how the app is behaving, and later manually increasing the rollout up to 100%.

If INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE is set to manual in your project, then instead of the standard production job, 4 different manual jobs will be created:

rollout 10%
rollout 25%
rollout 50%
rollout 100%

The percentage is based on the REPLICAS variable and defines the number of pods you want to have for your deployment. If you say 10, and then you run the 10% rollout job, there will be 1 new pod + 9 old ones.

To start a job, click on the play icon next to the job's name. You are not required to go from 10% to 100%, you can jump to whatever job you want. You can also scale down by running a lower percentage job, just before hitting 100%. Once you get to 100%, you cannot scale down, and you'd have to roll back by redeploying the old version using the rollback button in the environment page.

Below, you can see how the pipeline will look if the rollout or staging variables are defined.

Without INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE and without STAGING_ENABLED:

Without INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE and with STAGING_ENABLED:

With INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE set to manual and without STAGING_ENABLED:

With INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE set to manual and with STAGING_ENABLED

CAUTION: Caution: Before GitLab 11.4 this feature was enabled by the presence of the INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_ENABLED environment variable. This configuration is deprecated and will be removed in the future.

Timed incremental rollout to production (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab 11.4.

TIP: Tip: You can also set this inside your project's settings.

This configuration is based on incremental rollout to production.

Everything behaves the same way, except:

It's enabled by setting the INCREMENTAL_ROLLOUT_MODE variable to timed.
Instead of the standard production job, the following jobs are created with a 5 minute delay between each :
1. timed rollout 10%
2. timed rollout 25%
3. timed rollout 50%
4. timed rollout 100%

Auto DevOps banner

The following Auto DevOps banner will show for maintainers+ on new projects when Auto DevOps is not enabled:

The banner can be disabled for:

A user when they dismiss it themselves.
A project by explicitly disabling Auto DevOps.

An entire GitLab instance:

By an administrator running the following in a Rails console:
```
Feature.get(:auto_devops_banner_disabled).enable
```

Through the REST API with an admin access token:

curl --data "value=true" --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <personal_access_token>" https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/features/auto_devops_banner_disabled

30 KiB Raw Blame History

Customizing Auto DevOps

Custom buildpacks

Multiple buildpacks

Custom Dockerfile

Passing arguments to docker build

Passing secrets to docker build

Custom Helm Chart

Customize values for Helm Chart

Custom Helm chart per environment

Customizing .gitlab-ci.yml

Customizing the Kubernetes namespace

Using components of Auto DevOps

PostgreSQL database support

Upgrading PostgresSQL

Using external PostgreSQL database providers

Environment variables

Build and deployment

Database

Security tools

Disable jobs

Application secret variables

Advanced replica variables setup

Deploy policy for staging and production environments

Deploy policy for canary environments (PREMIUM)

Incremental rollout to production (PREMIUM)

Timed incremental rollout to production (PREMIUM)

Auto DevOps banner

30 KiB

Raw Blame History

Custom `Dockerfile`

Passing arguments to `docker build`

Passing secrets to `docker build`

Customizing `.gitlab-ci.yml`