Custom job shell

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Release notes

Gitlab can build on many platforms, but some systems, including docker images require complex bootstrapping before a build can be started.

By default, gitlab executes builds in /bin/sh on unix/linux and powershell for windows. This feature would let developers specify the shell to be used for the scripts in a job directly in the gitlab YAML.

Intended users

Any developer:

• Delaney (Development Team Lead)
• Sasha (Software Developer)
• Devon (DevOps Engineer)
• Sidney (Systems Administrator)
• Sam (Security Analyst)
• Rachel (Release Manager)
• Alex (Security Operations Engineer)
• Simone (Software Engineer in Test)
• Allison (Application Ops)
• Priyanka (Platform Engineer)
• Dana (Data Analyst) -->

User experience goal

A developer should be able to specify any shell program and have the job scripts execute within it. The shell can be anything that can accept a single file as an argument (that file contains the script content), eg:

/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/python
powershell
cmd
perl

Proposal

Example yaml:

job:
  image: docker:dind
  shell: dockerd-entrypoint.sh /bin/sh
  script:
    - docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/mounted ....

or even

job:
  image: python:3.7
  shell: python
  script:
    - import os
    - print("hello world, cwd={}".format(os.getcwd())

Permissions and Security

No extra permissions beyond being able to trigger a pipeline