Arbitrary value (i.e., one-dimensional array or matrix) for parallel jobs
Problem to solve
The parallel option allow you to create multiple copies of the same job with an automatically incremented CI_NODE_INDEX over the jobs we create. However, it could be more useful if I could specify my own array of values for these jobs.
Target audience
Further details
Use cases could include a Node project that has an arbitray set of scripts outside of just npm test or npm build that I want to run. Perhaps I have a package.json with:
"scripts": {
"clean": "rimraf dist/*",
"prebuild": "npm run clean -s",
"build": "npm run build:scripts -s && npm run build:styles -s && npm run build:markup -s",
"build:scripts": "browserify -d assets/scripts/main.js -p [minifyify --compressPath . --map main.js.map --output dist/main.js.map] | hashmark -n dist/main.js -s -l 8 -m assets.json \"dist/{name}{hash}{ext}\"",
"build:styles": "stylus assets/styles/main.styl -m -o dist/ && hashmark -s -l 8 -m assets.json dist/main.css \"dist/{name}{hash}{ext}\"",
"build:markup": "jade assets/markup/index.jade --obj assets.json -o dist",
"test": "karma start --singleRun",
},I could then say at the build stage I want to parallelize it and have it run the scripts ["build", "build:scripts", "build:styles", "build:markup"].
Proposal
We could expand on the matrix keyword to accept a one-dimensional matrix as follows:
deploystacks:
stage: deploy
script:
- bin/deploy
parallel:
matrix:
- PROVIDER: [gcp, vultr]This would solve this use case in a clear way, using existing features (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#parallel-matrix-jobs).