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Support Markdown newlines in CI/CD variable description

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Release notes

A previous issue (#441474 (closed)) made a request to support Markdown and newlined content for CI/CD variable descriptions. A merge request was created and eventually merged in (!183823 (merged)) that provided support for Markdown content. While functional, it does not include support for newlined Markdown content. There is support for HTML tags to use br tags to generate newlines, but it does not always integrate well with all Markdown content (e.g. lists). Creating this issue to specifically request to include newline support in the Markdown content.

Problem to solve

A developer may need to reflect more than a one-liner or paragraph of content for an individual CI/CD variable description. Supporting newlines in markdown content can make it easy for users to understand a given option.

Intended users

Developer

User experience goal

n/a

Proposal

Support the ability to have newlined content in a CI/CD description defined by Markdown content.

For example, a developer may define this in a pipeline script:

variables:
  BUILD_MODE:
    value: "default"
    options:
      - "default"
      - "minimal"
      - "extended"
      - "extended-security"
    description: >
      Specify the build mode to perform.

      The following option allows a user to override the default mode to perform this
      job. This can be used be used for R, S or even [T](example-link).

      Details of each mode are as follows:
      - `default`: This is the default mode.
      - `minimal`: Performs a minimal-type of build, disabling options U and I.
      - `extended`: An extended mode can help include experimental options that are
                    not yet part of a build (e.g. the ["W"](w) capability).
      - `extended-security`: Same as the extended mode, but we also enable security
                             options on these extended features.

The following shows an example on how the above is rendered at the time of writing (2025-04-27) versus what is desired:

image

Further details

n/a

Permissions and Security

n/a

Documentation

n/a

Availability & Testing

n/a

Available Tier

All

Feature Usage Metrics

n/a

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

n/a

What is the type of buyer?

n/a

Is this a cross-stage feature?

n/a

What is the competitive advantage or differentiation for this feature?

n/a

Links / references

Edited by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖