GitLab CI and Other Platforms

While GitHub Actions is popular, it is not the only CI/CD platform. This lesson covers GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, CircleCI, and other platforms, helping you understand the landscape and choose the right tool.

---

GitLab CI/CD

GitLab CI/CD is a built-in CI/CD solution that is part of GitLab — no separate tool or integration needed.

Key Features

• Integrated — CI/CD lives alongside code, issues, and container registry
• Auto DevOps — automatic pipeline detection and configuration
• Self-hosted or cloud — run GitLab on your own servers or use gitlab.com
• Container Registry — built-in Docker image registry
• Environments — track deployments across environments
• Review Apps — deploy each merge request to its own environment

.gitlab-ci.yml

GitLab pipelines are defined in a .gitlab-ci.yml file at the root of the repository:

stages:
  - build
  - test
  - deploy

variables:
  NODE_ENV: production

build:
  stage: build
  image: node:20-alpine
  script:
    - npm ci
    - npm run build
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - dist/
    expire_in: 1 hour

test:
  stage: test
  image: node:20-alpine
  script:
    - npm ci
    - npm run lint
    - npm test -- --coverage
  coverage: '/All files[^|]*\|[^|]*\s+([\d.]+)/'