Automatically publishing your build artifacts

Hi, interesting post, thanks. Sharing how you can do it with GitLab :) Start with defining artifacts in the job config, and download them directly in the MR during the review & QA process. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/job_artifacts.html

build-job:

  script:

    - ./build-dist-artifacts.sh

  artifacts:

    paths:

      - dist/*

Engineers can use `filter pipelines` to find specific branches, tags, etc. they are looking for.

Large binary files may consume lots of storage, and need regular cleanup. `expire_in` allows to control the cleanup in GitLab. For older builds, you can always retry the build job/pipeline, and generate artifacts on demand, i.e. when debugging a problem between older release versions.

This is helpful for tarballs, also RPM/DEB packages, etc - anything which requires time and knowledge to build manually on a local development environment. With GitLab API access, you can integrate the job artifacts into more automated workflows or custom index websites of your choice, leaving the storage as SSoT in GitLab.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/job_artifacts.html#download-a...

The job artifacts can be put into a cloud object storage, like S3, too. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/job_artifacts.html...

Last but but not least: If you prefer building your own file index based on smaller sized artifacts, you could use GitLab Pages and follow this post: https://forum.gitlab.com/t/how-to-allow-directory-listing-on... to publish the artifacts and create an html index.

I've done a similar approach to publish custom code coverage reports in CI/CD in a past workshop: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-de/workshops/ci-monitoring-webcast... - can be handy for reviews and QA checks too.

If you don't publish your build artifacts, what are you deploying?

I often "publish" artifacts internally in github actions with the actions/upload-artifact action. https://github.com/actions/upload-artifact

//.github/workflows/main.yml

  name: Main

  on:
    push:
      branches: [ main ]
    pull_request:
      branches: [ main ]

  jobs:

    build:
      runs-on: self-hosted
      steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v2
        with:
          go-version: 1.16

      - name: Test
        run: go test -v ./...

      - name: Build Discover Command
        run: go build -o discover cmd/discover/main.go

      - name: Upload Build Artifacts
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: discover
          path: discover

For internal tooling we often publish tagged artifacts to releases on the repo using a workflow that is triggered when someone creates a release. The creation of the release makes a new tag and triggers the build.

//.github/workflows/release.yml

  name: Release

  on:
    release:
      types:
        - published

  jobs:
    build:
      runs-on: self-hosted
      env:
        GOPRIVATE: "github.com/OUR-ORG-NAME/\*"
        NAME: deploy-${{ github.event.release.tag_name }}-${{ matrix.GOOS }}-${{ matrix.GOARCH }}${{ matrix.EXTENSION }}
      strategy:
        matrix:
          GOOS: [ windows, linux, darwin ]
          GOARCH: [ amd64, 386 ]
          exclude:
            # excludes 32bit on macOS
            - GOOS: darwin
              GOARCH: 386
          include:
            # includes a new variable for windows builds
            - GOOS: windows
              EXTENSION: ".exe"
      steps:
        # Runs a single command using the runners shell
        - name: Print Info
          run: echo '${{ toJSON(github.event.release) }}'

        - uses: actions/checkout@v2

        - name: Set up Go
          uses: actions/setup-go@v2
          with:
            go-version: 1.16

        # From https://github.com/mvdan/github-actions-golang/blob/master/README.md
        - name: Configure git for private modules
          run: |
            git config --global \
            url."https://${{ secrets.GHUSER }}:${{ secrets.GHTOKEN }}@github.com".insteadOf \
            "https://github.com"
        - name: Build ${{ env.NAME }} Command
          run: |
            GOOS=${{ matrix.GOOS }} \
            GOARCH=${{ matrix.GOARCH }} \
            go build -o ${{ env.NAME }} cmd/main.go
        - name: Upload Release Asset - ${{ matrix.GOOS }} / ${{ matrix.GOARCH }}
          uses: actions/upload-release-asset@v1
          env:
            GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          with:
            upload_url: ${{ github.event.release.upload_url }}
            asset_path: ./${{ env.NAME }}
            asset_name:   ${{ env.NAME }}
            asset_content_type: application/octet-stream

edit: code formatting