Environment-specific Configs for AI Workflows in GitLab Variables

Python and GitLab: Environment-Specific AI Workflow Configs

When developing AI workflows, it may be necessary to have different configurations for different environments—such as development, staging, and production—while using GitLab as your CI/CD platform. Environment-specific configurations can include things like API keys, database URLs, or any other sensitive or environment-specific information.

GitLab provides a feature called "Variables" that allows you to store such configurations. They can be set at various scopes: at the instance level, group level, project level, and even specific to pipeline schedules. This provides a hierarchical structure that respects the inheritance of variables and their overriding as needed.

In Pulumi, using the GitLab provider, you can manage these variables programmatically, which helps in automating the setup and maintaining consistency across environments. Let's look at how you could define environment-specific configurations using Pulumi in Python.

You'll use two GitLab resources from the Pulumi GitLab provider:

gitlab.ProjectVariable: To set project-level variables.
gitlab.GroupVariable: To set group-level variables.

Below is a Pulumi Python program that demonstrates how to create both project and group variables in GitLab using these resources.

import pulumi
import pulumi_gitlab as gitlab

# The name of your GitLab group and project
group_name = "your-gitlab-group-name"
project_name = "your-gitlab-project-name"

# Define a group-level GitLab variable. This could be a variable that is applicable to all projects in the group.
group_variable = gitlab.GroupVariable("example-group-variable",
    group=group_name,
    key="GROUP_LEVEL_ENV_VAR",
    value="group-specific-value",
    protected=False,  # Set to True if you want this variable to be available only to protected branches/tags
    masked=False,     # Set to True to hide the value in job logs
)

# Now let's define a project-level GitLab variable specific to an environment.
project_variable_dev = gitlab.ProjectVariable("example-project-variable-dev",
    project=project_name,
    key="PROJECT_LEVEL_ENV_VAR",
    value="dev-specific-value",
    environment_scope="dev",  # This specifies that the variable is only for the 'dev' environment
)

# Similarly, you can define variables for other environments like staging or production.
# Just change the `environment_scope` and `value` accordingly.
project_variable_prod = gitlab.ProjectVariable("example-project-variable-prod",
    project=project_name,
    key="PROJECT_LEVEL_ENV_VAR",
    value="prod-specific-value",
    environment_scope="prod",
)

# Output the IDs of the created variables. This is optional but can be useful if you want to reference these
# variables outside of Pulumi, e.g., in scripts or other tools.
pulumi.export("group_variable_id", group_variable.id)
pulumi.export("project_variable_dev_id", project_variable_dev.id)
pulumi.export("project_variable_prod_id", project_variable_prod.id)

In the code above:

gitlab.GroupVariable is used to create a variable at the group level, meaning this variable will be accessible by all projects within the group.
gitlab.ProjectVariable sets a variable specific to a single project. The environment_scope parameter is used here to specify that the given key and value pair is only applicable to a specific environment (like dev or prod).

This Pulumi program will enable version-controlled, consistent, and automated configuration of your GitLab CI/CD variables, which is especially useful for complex AI workflows that may have many environment-specific settings.

For more detailed information on the specific GitLab resources used in this program, you can refer to the Pulumi documentation:

By defining environment-specific configurations as code, you gain the benefits of code reviews, change history, and better governance over how sensitive information like secrets is managed. This is a foundational practice in DevOps, making your infrastructure more reproducible and less error-prone.