CI-pipeline ignore any commands that fail in a given step - gitlab-ci

Question

I'm trying to debug a CI pipeline and want to create a custom logger stage that dumps a bunch of information about the environment in which the pipeline is running.
I tried adding this:
stages:
- logger
logger-commands:
stage: logger
allow_failure: true
script:
- echo 'Examining environment'
- echo PWD=$(pwd) Using image ${CI_JOB_IMAGE}
- git --version
- echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- env
- echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- npm --version
- node --version
- echo java -version
- mvn --version
- kanico --version
- echo --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The problem is that the Java command is failing because java isn't installed. The error says:
/bin/sh: eval: line 217: java: not found
I know I could remove the line java -version, but I'm trying to come up with a canned logger that I could use in all my CI-Pipelines, so it would include: Java, Maven, Node, npm, python, and whatever else I want to include and I realize that some of those commands will fail because some of the commands are not found.
Searching for the above solution got me close.
GitLab CI: How to continue job even when script fails - Which did help. By adding allow_failure: true I found that even if the logger job failed the remaining stages would run (which is desirable). The answer also suggests a syntax to wrap commands in which is:
./script_that_fails.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 || FAILED=true
if [ $FAILED ]
then ./do_something.sh
fi
So that is helpful, but my question is this.
Is there anything built into gitlab's CI-pipeline syntax (or bash syntax) that allows all commands in a given step to run even if one command fails?
Is it possible to allow for a script in a CI/CD job to fail? - suggests adding the UNIX bash OR syntax as shown below:
- npm --version || echo nmp failed
- node --version || echo node failed
- echo java -version || echo java failed
That is a little cleaner (syntax) but I'm trying to make it simpler.

Answer 1

The answers already mentioned are good, but I was looking for something simpler so I wrote the following bash script. The script always returns a zero exit code so the CI-pipeline always thinks the command was successful.
If the command did fail, the command is printed along with the non-zero exit code.
# File: runit
#!/bin/sh
"$#"
EXITCODE=$?
if [ $EXITCODE -ne 0 ]
then
echo "CMD: $#"
echo "Ignored exit code ($EXITCODE)"
fi
exit 0
Testing it as follows:
./runit ls "/bad dir"
echo "ExitCode = $?"
Gives this output:
ls: cannot access /bad dir: No such file or directory
CMD: ls /bad dir
Ignored exit code (2)
ExitCode=0
Notice even though the command failed the ExitCode=0 shows what the ci-pipeline will see.
To use it in the pipeline, I have to have that shell script available. I'll research how to include it, but it must be in the CI runner job. For example,
stages:
- logger-safe
logger-safe-commands:
stage: logger-safe
allow_failure: true
script:
- ./runit npm --version
- ./runit java -version
- ./runit mvn --version
I don't like this solution because it requires extra file in the repo but this is in the spirit of what I'm looking for. So far the simplest built in solution is:
- some_command || echo command failed $?