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gitlabgitlab-cikubernetes-helm

Helm set argument failing from Gitlab job variable

I need to set a list of values for helm, which works when I run it locally or in the Gitlab pipeline if it's directly in the script section.

However, if I pass the list in as a job variable it gets interpreted as a single string.

For example this would work:

.openshift_template: &openshift_template
  stage: deploy
  tags:
    - $RUNNER
  environment: $ENVIRONMENT
  script:
  - >    
    helm upgrade $RELEASE helm/charts/ -f ./helm/charts/values.yaml
    --install
    --set Hosts={host1\,host2\,host3}

This, however would not work:

.openshift_template: &openshift_template
  stage: deploy
  tags:
    - $RUNNER
  environment: $ENVIRONMENT
  script:
  - >    
    helm upgrade $RELEASE helm/charts/ -f ./helm/charts/values.yaml
    --install
    $HELM_ARGS
    
    
    openshift:prod:
   <<: *openshift_template   
   variables:     
     HELM_ARGS: >
        --set Hosts={host1\,host2\,host3}

It does set the value, it just doesn't get interpreted as a list for some reason.

Solution

  • Just figured this out, although I'm still not 100% sure on the cause.

    Basically, when written directly in the template's script (or command line) the commas need to be escaped (e.g. --set hosts={host1\,host2\,host3} ) but when it's in a job variable you can't escape the commas, it needs to be --set hosts={host1,host2,host3}