Direct Viewing of Generated Pipeline Files with Syntax Highlighting

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Release notes

Introducing the ability to directly view generated pipeline files within the GitLab interface, complete with syntax highlighting. This feature eliminates the need to download these files, streamlining your workflow and making it easier to quickly review or debug your pipelines.

Problem to solve

Currently, to view a generated pipeline file like gitlab-child-pipeline.yml, users have to navigate through several steps:

1. Click on "Job artifacts: browse."
2. Select the generated pipeline file.
3. Encounter a message saying, The source could not be displayed because it is stored as a job artifact. You can download it instead.
4. Click on "download it."
5. Finally, click on the downloaded file in the browser to view it.

This is cumbersome and interrupts the workflow, especially when quick checks are needed. Moreover, other parts of GitLab offer syntax-highlighted editing for pipelines, but this feature is missing for viewing generated pipeline files.

Proposal

It would be nice if all pipelines, generated or not, provided a link to a syntax-highlighted view of their pipeline file. Perhaps adding a "View File" button next to the "Download" button for generated pipeline files under "Job artifacts." Clicking this button will open the file in a new tab or window (or pipeline editor) within the GitLab interface, displaying its content with syntax highlighting.

Intended users

• Delaney (Development Team Lead)
• Presley (Product Designer)
• Sasha (Software Developer)
• Priyanka (Platform Engineer)
• Rachel (Release Manager)
• Simone (Software Engineer in Test)

Feature Usage Metrics

We can track the usage of this feature by:

• The number of times the "View File" button is clicked?
• The amount of time spent viewing the file within the GitLab interface?

Does this feature require an audit event?

No, viewing a file should not require an audit event.

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