Cannot get !reference to work in .gitlab-ci.yaml

Question

I am working with GitLab 14.6.2-ee.

I am trying to use the YAML reference feature to re-use code snippets in my GitLab configuration files. I've boiled it down to what I think is the simplest use case, but cannot get the file to validate.

.gitlab-ci.yaml:

...
.hidden:
  .update-static-site:
    rules:
        if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH =~ /(^develop$|^master$|^staging-.*)/

...
trigger-downstream-pipeline:
  stage: .post
  trigger:
    project: project-x/project-x-manifest
    branch: master
  variables:
    SOURCE_COMMIT_SHA: $CI_COMMIT_SHA
    SOURCE_COMMIT_REF_NAME: $CI_COMMIT_REF_NAME
    APP_NAME: project-x
  needs:
    - job: push-project-x-to-harbor
      artifacts: false
  rules:
    - !reference [.hidden, .update-static-site, rules]

I cannot get the !reference line to validate. I keep getting Unresolved tag: !reference.

I found a SO posting (GitLab CI - Reuse rules with !reference tag) that addresses exactly what I'm trying to do, but it does not work.

Hypso

Can you try changing it to rules: !reference [.hidden, .update-static-site, rules] and see if that works? i.e. not a list, but a single value for rules: – Surfacetoair

That didn't work either. Tried it on the same line as the rules: statement as well as indented on the next line. – Hypso

Bummer, I'm afraid I don't have any other suggestions. Hopefully, someone else will be able to help you out. – Surfacetoair

Hmmm. I'm not able to reproduce this problem on the latest version of GitLab. Are you getting this as a YAML validation error? When I copy/paste your provided YAML into the GitLab CI lint validator on gitlab.com it works without any errors (assuming the job push-project-x-to-harbor exists). Are you sure you've provided a reproducible example? Maybe there's a problem lost in translation here that's not in the question. I don't think it's a GitLab version issue since this feature doesn't have any change notes for newer versions, but that may be a possibility. – Araucaria

Answer 1

So, the main problem was that I needed to change my VS Code config to accept the YAML reference tags. Once that was done, no more validation errors.

When I committed the changes and watched the pipeline, there were no issues.

Hypso

Would be good to share how did you change your VSCode config. For anyone looking for it I had to put: "yaml.customTags": [ "!reference sequence" ] in .vscode/settings.json – Starrstarred

Answer 2

configure your IDE to support reference tags

The following formatting should works as well (at least it does for me when referencing scripts):

script:
  - !reference
    - .hiddenjob
    - script

Heartstricken