How to export a variable to all of the stages in CICD?

Question

I have some stages and I need to create a name for a folder in one stage and use it in another stage. like the code below :

  ...
  before_script:
    - cd publish
    - export TZ=Europe/Madrid
    - ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone
    - export BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME=$(date +%Y%m%d.%H%M)
  ...

and now I want to create a folder in another stage and name it the date in BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME. How to do that?

Answer 1

You can use dotenv report artifacts to pass variables to subsequent stages/jobs via artifacts

set-variables:
  stage: .pre # always the first stage in a pipeline
  script:
    # ... set your variables
    # create the dotenv file
    - echo "BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME=${BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME}" > vars.env
  artifacts:
    reports:
      dotenv: "vars.env"

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    # this variable was set automatically by the artifact
    - echo "$BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME"
# ...

---

However, if you just want a common time for all jobs in a pipeline to use, you can use the predefined variable $CI_PIPELINE_CREATED_AT which is an ISO8601 timestamp of the pipeline creation time (e.g., 2023-07-17T17:11:20Z).

before_script:
  # in case your image doesn't have tzdata configured use this step:
  - DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt update && apt install -y tzdata
  # use $CI_PIPELINE_CREATED_AT to form the backup folder name:
  - BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME=$(TZ='Europe/Madrid' date -d "$CI_PIPELINE_CREATED_AT" +%Y%m%d.%H%M)
  - echo "backup folder is ${BACKUP_FOLDER_NAME}"

In this case, you won't have to pass any variables between jobs because CI_PIPELINE_CREATED_AT is the same value for all jobs in the same pipeline.