CI 'on_failure' conditional not working using rules

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Summary

In the documentation the 'when'-section has an example how to run a (cleanup) job no matter the status of the pipeline, using the when: always.

That works, but I need to know the status in the cleanup script, so I created a cleanup job with rules and conditional variables:

cleanup_rules_job:
  stage: cleanup
  rules:
    - when: on_success
      variables:
        PIPELINE_STATUS: succeeded
    - when: on_failure
      variables:
        PIPELINE_STATUS: failed
  script:
    - echo "cleaning up"
    - echo "The pipeline has ${PIPELINE_STATUS}!"

❌ This cleanup job does not run on a failed pipeline.

Steps to reproduce

Create a pipeline using the following configuration

# .gitlab-ci.yml

stages:
  - build
  - cleanup

build_job:
  stage: build
  script:
    - echo "build failed"
    - exit 1

cleanup_job:
  stage: cleanup
  rules:
    - when: on_success
      variables:
        PIPELINE_STATUS: succeeded
    - when: on_failure
      variables:
        PIPELINE_STATUS: failed
  script:
    - echo "cleaning up"
    - echo "The pipeline has ${PIPELINE_STATUS}!"

Example Project

https://gitlab.com/maikelv/test-ci-cleanup-job

What is the current bug behavior?

The cleanup_job doesn't run:

image

https://gitlab.com/maikelv/test-ci-cleanup-job/-/pipelines/636279078

What is the expected correct behavior?

The cleanup_job also runs and in its script the PIPELINE_STATUS == failed (or succeeded on a successful pipeline).

image

Output of checks

This bug happens on GitLab.com (currently v15.4.0-pre f62de2bcba0)

Workaround

An ugly workaround is to create two jobs, one with when: on_success and the other with when: on_failure and set the status variable on each:

cleanup_job_on_success:
  stage: cleanup
  when: on_success
  variables:
    PIPELINE_STATUS: succeeded
  script:
    - echo "cleaning up"
    - echo "The pipeline has ${PIPELINE_STATUS}!"

cleanup_job_on_failure:
  extends: cleanup_job_on_success
  when: on_failure
  variables:
    PIPELINE_STATUS: failed

See maikelv/test-ci-cleanup-job!1

This is not a very attractive solution because it creates two identical jobs while this should be just one. Also it complicates the .gitlab-ci.yml.

Edited by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖