Set up Git repository

Your default branch should be called main, this might already be the case.

This can be managed within the repository UI: Settings → Repository.

Your default branch should be protected

Open Settings → Repository and find the “Protected Branches” tab.

Choose “Developers + Maintainers” in the “Allowed to merge” tab and “No one” option in the “Allowed to push”:

This means that no one can push directly to it. Instead, all changes must be made via a merge request.

Related resources

More on branch naming More on merge request

As mentioned above, all code integrated with main is done via a merge request.

For this to work well you need update some config.

Within the repository UI go to Settings → General and expand the Merge requests tab.

Select two checkboxes:

• Pipelines must succeed
• All discussions must be resolved

1. Create a .gitlab-ci.yml file in the root of your repository.
2. Copy the contents of the .gitlab-ci.yml file, click the button below.
3. Paste it into your new .gitlab-ci.yml file.
4. Commit and push this using the branching strategy.

GitLab CI Script :.gitlab-ci.yml

Copy code View code

image: node:18.15.0 // Change to suit your node version

build:
  stage: build
  script:
    - npm install
    - npm run build
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - dist/

deploy:
  stage: deploy
  before_script:
    - git remote set-url --push origin https://gitlab-ci-token:${CI_DEPLOY_TOKEN}@${CI_SERVER_HOST}/${CI_PROJECT_PATH}
    - git config --global user.name "$GITLAB_USER_NAME"
    - git config --global user.email "$GITLAB_USER_EMAIL"
  only:
    variables:
      - $DEPLOY
      - $BRANCH_NAME
  script:
    - DEPLOY_BRANCH="deploy/${BRANCH_NAME}"
    - TAG_NAME="$BRANCH_NAME-$(date +'%Y%m%d-%H%M%S')"
    - git branch -D $DEPLOY_BRANCH || true
    - git checkout --orphan $DEPLOY_BRANCH
    - git rm -rf .
    - mkdir -p dist
    - git add -f dist/
    - git commit -m "Update artifacts for $DEPLOY_BRANCH"
    - git push --force origin "$DEPLOY_BRANCH"
    - if [ "$DEPLOY_BRANCH" = "deploy/production" ]; then git tag -a $TAG_NAME -m "Tagging production release $TAG_NAME"; git push origin $TAG_NAME; fi
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - dist/*
  dependencies:
    - build

Related resources

More on deployment Learn how to deploy

If you look at the CI script closely you might notice a variable called, CI_DEPLOY_TOKEN. This references a special token that allows the CI script to write to the repository. We need to generate this token with the correct scope.

Within the repository UI go to Settings → Access Tokens.

1. Name it CI_DEPLOY_TOKEN.
2. Check write_repository scope.
3. Generate access token.
4. Copy it, ready for the next step.

Related resources

GitLab deploy tokens

Lastly, to enable the CI script create our deploy branches we need to create the CI_DEPLOY_TOKEN variable.

Within the repository UI go to Settings → CI/CD and expand Variables.

Add a new variable with the key CI_DEPLOY_TOKEN and the generated token as a value.