Bitbucket Pipelines - multiple branches with same steps

Question

Is it possible to combine multiple branches that have the same steps within bitbucket pipelines?

ex: The teams I work on use one of two names for their review branches, either "rev" or "staging". Either way the same steps are used to publish to our review server. Right now the branches are called out separately.

pipelines:
     branches:
          rev:
               steps:
                    - echo 'step'
          staging:
               steps:
                    - echo 'step'

but could it be something like

pipelines:
     branches:
          rev|staging:
               steps:
                    - echo 'step'

score 111 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 02 '17 at 21:49

111

A comma-separated list inside braces appears to work:

pipelines:
  branches:
    '{rev,staging}':
      - step:
        script:
          - echo 'step'

answered Jul 02 '17 at 21:49

RH Becker

1,692
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10

I think this solution is cleaner than the others. I use it like this: `'{feature/*,fix/*}'` because all the `feature` and `fix` branches go through the same steps. – ordonezalex Jul 19 '17 at 22:55
20

Make sure you don't put a space behind the comma in the branches config, or it'll assume your branch name has a space in front of it. (so DONT do: `'{rev, staging}'`) – Jones03 Oct 22 '18 at 11:22
1

Thanks so muc it is working now. I am using it like this `'{release/**,hotfix/**}':` – Mina Luke Jul 24 '19 at 03:02

Max Malysh · Answer 2 · 2018-11-21T21:36:11.173

This is a full example on how you can reuse some steps:

image: yourimage:latest

definitions:
  services: ... # Service definitions go there
  steps:
    - step: &Test-step
        name: Run tests
        script:
          - npm install
          - npm run test
    - step: &Deploy-step
        name: Deploy to staging
        deployment: staging
        script:
          - npm install
          - npm run build
          - fab deploy
pipelines:
  default:
    - step: *Test-step
    - step: *Deploy-step
  branches:
      master:
        - step: *Test-step
        - step:
            <<: *Deploy-step
            deployment: production
            trigger: manual

Read more about YAML anchors: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/yaml-anchors-960154027.html

Anthon · Answer 3 · 2019-01-16T13:19:11.637

14

Instead of interpreting rev|staging, a far more natural way of implementing that would be using a flow style sequence as a key:

pipelines:
  branches:
    [rev, staging]:
    - step:
      script:
      - echo 'step'

That would alleviates the need for quoting and for making sure spaces, or an extra (trailing) comma, make no semantic difference. Depending on the library that bitbucket uses to process this, the above might parse correctly, but not load (e.g. PyYAML cannot handle the above, but ruamel.yaml). I have not been able to verify if this preferable way actually works in bitbucket.

There are two ways that do work, one using the familiar YAML functionality of anchors and aliases to provide repeated (complex) data structures only once:

pipelines:
  branches:
    rev: &sharedsteps
    - step:
      script:
      - echo 'step'
    staging: *sharedsteps

The other possibility is, as others have indicated, to use some a non-standard, bitbucket specific, interpretation of scalar keys with embedded comma's. I have not found clear documentation on this, but the glob patterns seem applicable, so you can use {rev,staging} as a key.

What is ugly about this is that { is the flow-style sequence indicator in YAML, so that scalar needs to be quoted:

pipelines:
  branches:
    "{rev,staging}":
    - step:
      script:
      - echo 'step'

_{The above was updated using the corrected step syntax that BlueM provided}

edited Jan 16 '19 at 13:19

answered Feb 17 '17 at 19:28

Anthon

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Cool, works indeed. (At least when using the correct Bb Pipeline syntax, which is not the case in the original post.) – BlueM Feb 23 '17 at 06:57
1

@BlueM Could you add the corrected syntax example as an alternative to my answer? – Anthon May 30 '17 at 12:20
1

Being a total noob in anything devops, this post quite confuses me. Where does the theory end and is this `"{a,b}"` the working solution? – Qwerty Feb 27 '19 at 12:19
`[rev, staging]:` is invalid for BitBucket's validator. – Roman Podlinov Jun 22 '20 at 12:01
anchors and aliases is a nice solution, readable and maintainable :) – jackblk Nov 23 '21 at 17:14
Tried the bracketted syntax in bitbucket and I got configuration error – Rich Mar 30 '23 at 15:59

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered May 30 '17 at 21:24

4

As requested by Anthon in a comment to his answer, this is his perfect solution, but with the correct YAML structure as expected by Bitbucket Pipelines:

pipelines:
  branches:
    rev: &sharedsteps
      - step:
          script:
            - echo 'step'
    staging: *sharedsteps

answered May 30 '17 at 21:24

BlueM

3,658
21
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I know. When using the validator, I encounterd various syntaxes that *do* work, but are reported as invalid. Obviously, the validator does not use the same codebase/language/library for parsing as the actual pipeline. – BlueM Nov 09 '17 at 07:51
1

Just attempted this syntax and bitbucket itself gave a validation error. – Snaver Jan 07 '18 at 23:41
2

Bitbucket pipelines do support YAML aliases and anchors, but the validator does not. If you want to validate the yaml, run it to through an online yaml-json converter (YAML => JSON => YAML) and present the resulting YAML to the validator. – bert bruynooghe Apr 18 '18 at 07:06

score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 07 '18 at 15:15

-1

With Bitbucket 5.8 in order to be able to manually trigger the pipeline I had to use this format:

pipelines:
  branches:
    rev,staging:
      - step:
        script:
          - echo 'step'

So basically just comma separated branch list which need the same pipeline

answered Mar 07 '18 at 15:15

Attila Csányi

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1
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4

Double checked, and this didn't work for me on bitbucket.org on feb 18, 2019. – Nino van Hooff Feb 18 '19 at 14:02
1

'{branchA,branchB}' works in March 2023 – Jason Harrison Mar 30 '23 at 00:53

Bitbucket Pipelines - multiple branches with same steps

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