Alex's Blog

Gitlab runner is a continuous integration tool that I've found it to be a lot easier than Jenkins to wrap my head around when it comes to deploying source code to demo machines.

In this scenario gitlab runner it pulls per-project source code to a runner machine then executes any of the commands specified in .gitlab-ci.yml from source code root directory.

Here's a sample configuration of updating source code on buildout-based Plone 5 project:

stages:
  - deploy
001 stop plone server:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - ./bin/supervisorctl shutdown
  cache:
    paths:
      - .installed.cfg
      - bin/*
      - develop-eggs/*
      - downloads/*
      - eggs/*
      - parts/*
      - var/*
002 rebuild project:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - ./bin/buildout -v -c buildout_prod.cfg
    - ./bin/supervisord
  cache:
    paths:
      - .installed.cfg
      - bin/*
      - develop-eggs/*
      - downloads/*
      - eggs/*
      - parts/*
      - var/*

I've been repeating a task of installing a runner for a particular projects -- setting up a gitlab runner, and I've found it to be spread over at least 3 documents:

• Install GitLab Runner using the official GitLab repositories
• Registering runners
• Gitlab Runner commands

To get runner installed and registered, the following steps should be taken:

1. Add gitlab-runner repo

CentOS 7

# curl -L https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

Debian

# curl -L https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/runner/gitlab-runner/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

2. Install gitlab-runner package

CentOS 7

# yum install gitlab-runner

Debian

# apt-get install gitlab-runner

3. Remove default gitlab-runner configuration (as root) and run it as a selected user. This step is not required if you're using default configuration, but in my case I have already setup environment for user 'alex' and it is a lot easier to run jobs there.

# gitlab-runner uninstall
# gitlab-runner install --working-directory=/home/alex --user=alex

4. Register gitlab runner with a gitlab server

# gitlab-runner register

For the last step the registration information is found in <gitlab server>/admin/runners

This document provides instructions on how to lock shared runners to specific projects -- https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/