Unable to skip running pipeline based on variable in Gitlab CI - gitlab-ci

Question

I'm trying to force the pipeline to skip running job whenever the project's branch is equal to develop. I've created the custom variable name $CURRENT_BRANCH that gathering from predefined variable $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME
- export CURRENT_BRANCH=`echo ${CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME} | awk -F '/' '{print $1}'`
The $CURRENT_BRANCH will pass along the first stage and it will save in the artifact
- >
if [ ${CURRENT_BRANCH} == 'feature' ]; then
export CURRENT_BRANCH="feature"
export FEATURE_NAME=`echo ${CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME} | awk -F '/' '{print $2}'`
echo "FEATURE_NAME=${FEATURE_NAME}" >> info.env
echo "PROJECT_NAME=${FEATURE_NAME}" >> info.env
else
export CURRENT_BRANCH=${CURRENT_BRANCH}
echo "PROJECT_NAME=${CURRENT_BRANCH}" >> info.env
fi
- echo "CURRENT_BRANCH=${CURRENT_BRANCH}" >> info.env
artifacts:
reports:
dotenv: info.env
Then in the next stage until the last stage, I've tried to skip running the pipeline with only/except and rules/when for example,
build_image:
image: docker:19.03
services:
- docker:dind
stage: release
only:
variables:
- $CURRENT_BRANCH != "develop"
as well as using rules and when condition
build_image:
image: docker:19.03
services:
- docker:dind
stage: release
rules:
- if: '$CURRENT_BRANCH == "develop"'
when: never
The pipeline still running. Are there anything that I miss?

Answer 1

Quoting from Gitlab docs https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#rules
Rules are evaluated when the pipeline is created, and evaluated in order until the first match. When a match is found, the job is either included or excluded from the pipeline, depending on the configuration.
You cannot use dotenv variables created in job scripts in rules, because rules are evaluated before any jobs run.
So you can not use variables created in one job to decide if a following job should triggered.
In your case why don't you use the predefined variable CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME directly?
CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME: The branch or tag name for which project is built
Change this
build_image:
image: docker:19.03
services:
- docker:dind
stage: release
rules:
- if: '$CURRENT_BRANCH == "develop"'
when: never
To
build_image:
image: docker:19.03
services:
- docker:dind
stage: release
rules:
- if: '$CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME == "develop"'
when: never

Answer 2

do you provide the full code of the job build_image?
The build_image job needs the info.env artifacts of your first job. Can you try to add this?
needs:
- job: '<first-job-name>'
artifacts: true