How to set an environment variable to a specific stage of gitlab ci pipeline - automation

Question

I am using GitLab ci as my pipeline for build -> test -> deploy_dev -> deploy_prod.
Some time ago I added a step called deploy private to deploy to some private dev environments.
To support this feature in the pipeline I need to edit an environment variable only for that stage in the pipeline (let's call that stage in pipeline deploy_private).
A few key points:
I need to change this environment variable, it is not fixed - I mean that each developer can name his private dev environment as he likes and it is not a fixed environment variable.
I do not want to override the environment variable to the whole pipeline, other stages in the pipeline use that environment variable already.
I do not want to override the environment variable to each job manually, we have about 10 jobs under deploy private and this will take too much time and it is a mundane task.
Making the pipeline less cupeled to that environment variable is the correct way to go, but this is a huge and old project so this is a risky task that could take weeks.
I tried to run the whole pipeline with a new environment variable - but this is not a valid option in my case.
Currently, I am editing the environment variable manually in GitLab UI, but this takes a long time, it is error-prone, and having 10 jobs in that stage of the pipeline means that this takes about 2-3 minutes

Answer 1

After searching for a while, and opening a feature ticket for Gitlab, I decided to on a simple but creative solution.
Taking the environment variable from the git branch name, by a branch naming convention we started to use in our projects.
see this link for more details.
Code for gitlab-ci.yaml file looks something like this
.set_stage_deploy_private: &set_stage_deploy_private
- echo "Please note that deploy private does not set the STAGE env var by
default"
- echo "You can set it manually or follow Branch Name Convention
(See README.me file)"
- echo "Your branch name is $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME"
# using Shell Parameter Expansion to extract STAGE after the . sign
- if [ -z "$STAGE" ] || [ -z "${STAGE// }" ] ;
then echo "STAGE was not set - will set STAGE from Branch Name Convention" ;
STAGE="${CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME##*.}" ;
fi
- echo "Your STAGE is $STAGE"
- echo "Verifying the STAGE is properly set ... "
# if STAGE is empty (was not set as env var and not with Branch Name
# Convention) abort build
- if [ -z "$STAGE" ] || [ -z "${STAGE// }" ] ;
then echo "STAGE is empty! STAGE was not set properly exiting..." ;
exit 1 ;
fi
# if STAGE is "sandbox" or "prod" abort the build
- if [ "$STAGE" = "$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME" ] || [ "$STAGE" = "sandbox" ] ||
[ "$STAGE" = "prod" ] ;
then echo "STAGE is not allowed! STAGE was not set properly
exiting..." ;
exit 1 ;
fi
- echo "Deploying service $SERVICE with stage $STAGE"
# Matrix deployment job for all 8 services to private stack
deploy_private:
extends:
- .deploy-dev
variables:
AWS_ACCOUNT_ID: $AWS_ACCOUNT_ID_DEV
AWS_REGION: $AWS_REGION_DEV
environment: private/${SERVICE}
parallel:
matrix:
- SERVICE:
- rabo
- rai
- rams
- raop
- ras
- raw
- rps
- school
before_script:
- *set_stage_deploy_private # will set STAGE env var to cache
script:
- *deploy_private # rest of deployment logic