How to escape a colon in .gitlab-ci.yml?

I have a line like this:

sed -i 's/"host: TND_HOST"/"host: process.env.TND_HOST"/g' services/management/tnd.js

and the option above causes linting error:

This GitLab CI configuration is invalid: (<unknown>): mapping values are not allowed in this context at line [...]

Other options that do not work are:

sed -i 's/host: TND_HOST/host: process.env.TND_HOST/g' services/management/tnd.js

sed -i "s/host: TND_HOST/host: process.env.TND_HOST/g" services/management/tnd.js

Any way to overcome the issue and keep it as a one-liner?

Solution

Since you are using both types of quotes it is probably easiest to put your command in a yaml template. That way you don't need to escape anything:

stages:
  - lint

.sed_template: &sed_template |
 sed -i 's/"host: TND_HOST"/"host: process.env.TND_HOST"/g' services/management/tnd.js

some_job:
  image: someImage:latest
  stage: lint
  except:
    - master
  cache:
    key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
    paths:
      - frontend/node_modules/
  script:
    - echo "firstLine"
    - *sed_template
    - echo "lastLine"

It's not quite a one liner anymore but I guess its the cleanest option as it keeps the command itself rather readable. Another option would be using folding style which shrinks it down a bit:

stages:
  - lint

some_job:
  image: someImage:latest
  stage: lint
  except:
    - master
  cache:
    key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
    paths:
      - frontend/node_modules/
  script:
    - echo "firstLine"
    - >
        sed -i 's/"host: TND_HOST"/"host: process.env.TND_HOST"/g' services/management/tnd.js
    - echo "lastLine"