Warn user when uses $ character in environment value
Release notes
The CI/CD variables within GitLab provide an easy to use way to inject various values into a pipeline. Unfortunately, this UI does not handle well some special characters, especially the $ (dollar) sign. This led to many frustrations by our users in the past. Today, we improved the GitLab UI around CI/CD variables to warn the user if they use a dollar sign in the value, and educate about the recommended workaround.
Problem to solve
As environment variable values by default get expanded when the value contains a $
sign in it, we should warn our users when a $
sign is added to be aware of this design.
See for details: #17069 (closed)
Intended users
User experience goal
The user should see a clear warning if they enter a $
sign when adding or editing an environment variable.
The warning should point to related documentation to work around this limitation.
Proposal
This should be a UI-only solution! The real handling of this problem is done in the other issues of this epic. This is just to inform the user about a potential problem they might just run into.
Omit the checkbox from the "Allow variable substitution" popup designs. That is to be handled by gitlab-runner#26346 (closed)
The link should point to https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/README.html . We should add a "Troubleshooting" section, and a variable substitution subsection. This should contain the 2 workaround proposed in these comments:
Further details
Permissions and Security
Documentation
The link should point to https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/README.html . We should add a "Troubleshooting" section, and a variable substitution subsection. This should contain the 2 workaround proposed in these comments: