Gitlab : Download artifacts from a job in another child pipeline

Question

I want to download an Artifact in a job present in a Child pipeline from another job present in another Child pipeline part of the same parent-child pipeline hierarchy.

I tried with the files below that are inspired from the Gitlab documentation (see the paragraph "Example of needs:pipeline:job" in https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/) but with no success (I have this error : This job depends on other jobs with expired/erased artifacts)

parent.yml

parent1:
  stage: test
  trigger:
    include: child1.yml
    strategy: depend

parent2:
  stage: test
  trigger:
    include: child2.yml
    strategy: depend
  variables:
    PARENT_PIPELINE_ID: $CI_PIPELINE_ID

Child1.yml

create-artifact:
  stage: build
  script: echo "sample artifact" > artifact.txt
  artifacts:
    paths: [artifact.txt]

Child2.yml

use-artifact:
  script: cat artifact.txt
  needs:
    - pipeline: $PARENT_PIPELINE_ID
      job: create-artifact

So according to the official Gitlab documentation : A child pipeline can download artifacts from a job in its parent pipeline or another child pipeline in the same parent-child pipeline hierarchy. so I am wondering how to make it work in my example files?

Answer 1

To grab artifacts from a job in another child pipeline within the same parent-child pipeline hierarchy, you can use the needs keyword along with the pipeline and job attributes. Here's how you can tweak your setup: parent.yml:

parent1:
  stage: test
  trigger:
    include: child1.yml
    strategy: depend

parent2:
  stage: test
  trigger:
    include: child2.yml
    strategy: depend
  variables:
    PARENT_PIPELINE_ID: $CI_PIPELINE_ID
child1.yml:
create-artifact:
  stage: build
  script: echo "sample artifact" > artifact.txt
  artifacts:
    paths: [artifact.txt]
    expire_in: 1 hour
child2.yml:
use-artifact:
  stage: test
  script: cat artifact.txt
  needs:
    - project: $CI_PROJECT_PATH
      job: create-artifact
      ref: $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME
      artifacts: true

Here's what's going on: 1. In child1.yml, the create-artifact job creates an artifact and sets an expiration time of 1 hour using expire_in. This way, the artifact is available for a short period.

2.  In child2.yml, the use-artifact job uses needs to specify that it depends on the create-artifact job from another child pipeline.
▪   project tells GitLab where to find the job. It uses $CI_PROJECT_PATH to point to the current project.
▪   job specifies the name of the job that creates the artifact.
▪   ref tells GitLab which branch or tag to look for. It uses $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME to refer to the current branch or tag.
▪   artifacts is set to true to let GitLab know that the job needs the artifacts from the specified job.

By using needs with these attributes, the use-artifact job in child2.yml can download and use the artifact created by the create-artifact job in child1.yml. Just keep in mind that the create-artifact job needs to finish successfully and the artifact should be available within the expiration time set by expire_in. Also, make sure the parent pipeline triggers both child pipelines and passes the necessary variables (PARENT_PIPELINE_ID) to set up the parent-child pipeline hierarchy correctly.