Continuous integration pipelines using GitLab CI/CD

Setting up CI/CD Pipelines with GitLab Provider

To establish continuous integration (CI) pipelines using GitLab CI/CD with Pulumi, we will leverage Pulumi's GitLab provider, which allows us to manage resources and configurations in GitLab programmatically.

The usual workflow with GitLab CI/CD involves defining a .gitlab-ci.yml file in the root of your repository. This YAML file tells GitLab CI/CD how to build, test, and deploy your application. However, Pulumi allows us to go further by enabling us to manage the GitLab projects, memberships, and other settings directly through code, offering an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach to CI/CD pipeline setups.

Below is a TypeScript program using Pulumi to create a GitLab project and set up a basic CI/CD pipeline by configuring the necessary files and settings. This program will create a new project in GitLab and add a .gitlab-ci.yml file to the repository. The CI/CD pipeline defined in the YAML file will be straightforward, running Pulumi up command, which provisions the infrastructure described by the Pulumi program.

First, ensure you have installed the Pulumi CLI and have an account set up with GitLab and Pulumi. Also, make sure to authenticate with GitLab in a way that Pulumi can leverage your GitLab tokens. Typically, this is done through the GitLab provider configuration.

Here's the Pulumi TypeScript program:

import * as pulumi from '@pulumi/pulumi';
import * as gitlab from '@pulumi/gitlab';

// Create a new GitLab project
const project = new gitlab.Project('my-pulumi-project', {
    name: 'my-pulumi-project',
    visibilityLevel: 'private', // Set visibility level as needed
});

// Add a .gitlab-ci.yml file to the project to define the CI/CD pipeline
const ciFile = new gitlab.ProjectFile('gitlab-ci', {
    content: `stages:
  - build
  - deploy

build_job:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "Running build stage..."

deploy_job:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "Running deploy stage..."
    - pulumi up --yes
`,
    filePath: '.gitlab-ci.yml',
    project: project.id,
});

// Output the GitLab project details
export const projectName = project.name;
export const projectWebUrl = project.webUrl;

Here's what we're doing in this program:

Importing the required Pulumi libraries.
Using the gitlab.Project resource from the GitLab provider to create a new project in your GitLab instance.
The gitlab.ProjectFile resource commits a .gitlab-ci.yml file directly into the root of the newly created GitLab project repository. This file defines two simple job stages - build and deploy.
The build_job stage includes a script, which would typically run any build commands your project needs.
The deploy_job stage runs a Pulumi deployment using the pulumi up --yes command to automate the deployment of your infrastructure.
The resulting artifacts from this setup are the project name and the web URL, which we export for easy access.

Run your Pulumi program with the following commands:

pulumi stack init my-stack
pulumi up

pulumi up will execute the Pulumi program, create the GitLab project and commit the CI/CD pipeline definition into the repository.

This simple example sets up a project and pipeline that can be further customized and extended based on specific build, test, and deploy steps your applications require.