How to fail a build on Gitlab CI shell runner

Question

I have a Gitlab CI runner running on windows 10:

before_script:
  - "echo off"
  - 'call "%VS120COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat"'
  - echo.
  - set
  - echo.

stages:
  - build

build:
  stage: build
  script:
  - 'StatusTest.exe'
  #- msbuild...

I am trying to fail the build with StatusText.exe (I tried returning status codes -1,0,1; throwing an exception, etc.) But Runner only logs the exception and continues with following steps.

What determines that CI shell runner should fail the build and not proceed to next step?

Output:

...
windows_tracing_logfile=C:\BVTBin\Tests\installpackage\csilogfile.log
$ echo.

$ StatusTest.exe

Unhandled Exception: System.Exception: tralala
   at StatusTest.Program.Main(String[] args)
$ echo "Restoring NuGet Packages..."
...

facing the same issue as you today, I posted an answer which is working for me. Hope it helps you and others — Ala Eddine JEBALI, Feb 06 '17 at 10:56

score 88 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 01 '22 at 14:16

88

What determines that CI shell runner should fail the build and not proceed to next step?

If a pipeline job exits with the code other than 0 then that job fails causing all the following jobs in the pipeline to be skipped.

This behaviour can be changed on a per job basis with allow_failure job keyword.

To make a job to fail forcefully you need to artificially exit from a job with code other than 0. Here is an gitlab-ci.yml job example :

some-example-job:
  script:
    - # ....
    - exit 1

See the GitLab CI UI sreeenshot example. The third job has failed.

On the opposite remove exit 0 and your job would succeed if the remaining script section commands do not exit with code other than 0.

Now see all the jobs & the entire pipeline finished successfully.

edited Aug 01 '22 at 14:16

Valentine Shi

6,604
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answered Feb 06 '17 at 10:55

Ala Eddine JEBALI

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1

It's true except in the `after_script` job section where `exit 1` doesn't fail the job – Nicolas Pepinster Apr 17 '19 at 10:47
2

That's because errors in the after_script don't fail jobs; that's (one of) the point of the after_script. – Jonathan Jul 01 '19 at 07:29
1

Are there any way to `skip a build` due to some circumstances.? – Ankur Loriya Sep 10 '19 at 05:39
What if executing script returns exit 1, it still fails the job? – Henadzi Rabkin Jan 20 '21 at 15:53

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

2

Your StatusTest.exe has to return a signal 1,0,-1 as status code. It must be implemented in your application. Otherwise the runner will not notify if your application fails. Almost every programming language has ways to return status codes.

C#

Java

System.exit(exitCode) # exitCode = 1 or 0 or -1

[...] and so on.

Maybe try to not throw an exception, just return a status code.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

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answered May 04 '16 at 12:19

Rubinum

547
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OP mentioned they already tried exit codes and exceptions. – Guney Ozsan Mar 25 '21 at 01:02

How to fail a build on Gitlab CI shell runner

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