Gitlab CI/CD Basics

This course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of CI/CD principles and how they integrate into development workflows using GitLab. Whether you're just starting with CI/CD or want to strengthen your skills, this course will guide you through the essentials and advanced features to help you effectively implement CI/CD pipelines in your projects.

What You’ll Learn:

• Introduction to CI/CD: Understand the fundamentals of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) and explore the benefits of integrating them into team workflows. Learn how these practices streamline software delivery, improve collaboration, and enhance code quality.

• Overview of GitLab CI/CD: Get an introduction to GitLab, a leading CI/CD tool, and compare it with other tools in the market. Understand why many teams favor GitLab for automating their build, test, and deployment processes.

• CI/CD Pipelines in GitLab: Learn about pipelines and their role in CI/CD. Discover how to create and configure pipelines using YAML files and understand the purpose of configuration files in GitLab CI/CD to automate development workflows.

• Configuration File Components: Dive deep into the key components of GitLab’s CI/CD configuration file. Explore each component in detail through examples and exercises, gaining hands-on experience with how to leverage these features effectively.

Course Highlights:

Hands-On Training: Each module includes practical exercises that allow you to apply the concepts in real time. You'll be able to configure your own GitLab CI/CD pipelines and build up your expertise with every step.
Towards the end of the course, you will complete exercises that integrate all the components, giving you the experience to confidently use GitLab for end-to-end CI/CD automation in your own projects.

By the end of this course, you will:

1. Understand the principles of CI/CD and its benefits to team workflows.

2. Be able to compare GitLab with other CI/CD tools and explain why it’s an excellent choice for automating build, test, and deployment pipelines.

3. Gain hands-on experience in creating and configuring GitLab CI/CD pipelines using YAML files.

4. Master the configuration file components of GitLab CI/CD, including pipeline jobs, stages, and job artifacts, image configuration, variables, manual pipeline triggers, and more.

5. Be able to apply advanced configurations such as variables, rules, anchors, and extends to optimize your CI/CD pipelines.

Course Structure:

• Introduction to CI/CD, its advantages, and its usage in Gitlab. Comparison of Gitalb CI/CD with other available technologies.

• Pipeline Jobs, Stages, and Job Artifacts: Understand how to define jobs, structure stages, and manage job artifacts in your GitLab CI/CD pipeline. With examples and exercises, you will be able to efficiently set up these components to automate your workflows.

• Image, Before and After Scripts, Needs, Allow_Failure: Learn how to configure pipeline images, set up pre- and post-execution scripts, and use features like needs and allow_failure to control the flow and handling of jobs within your pipelines.

• Variables and Security: Explore different types of variables—predefined, project-level, group-level, and job/pipeline-specific variables. Understand how to secure and manage these variables and discover best practices for sensitive data in CI/CD pipelines.

• When, Rules, Anchors, Extends: Dive into advanced configuration features such as when, rules, anchors, and extends, which provide flexibility in determining when and how pipeline jobs run and how to reuse and extend pipeline configurations.

Each section concludes with quizzes to reinforce your learning and exercises to summarize and apply what you’ve covered. This course is perfect for developers, DevOps engineers, and teams looking to streamline their development and deployment processes with GitLab CI/CD, enabling continuous delivery and faster iterations.

• Gain a solid understanding of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) principles.
• Learn to create and configure GitLab CI/CD pipelines using YAML files.
• Master key GitLab features, including pipeline jobs, stages, and job artifacts.
• Understand how to use GitLab variables (predefined, project-level, job-level) and ensure security in pipelines.
• Become proficient in advanced GitLab CI/CD features like when, rules, anchors, and extends to optimize workflows.
• Develop skills to troubleshoot and resolve issues in GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
• Apply best practices for managing sensitive data and variables in CI/CD pipelines.

• Introduction: [Theory - 15 min]
• What is Gitlab?: [Theory - 10 min]
• Pipeline in Gitlab CI/CD: [Theory - 10 min]
• Configuration YAML file: [Theory – 20 min]
• JOBS, STAGES, ARTIFACTS: [Theory - 45 min, Quizzes – 10 min]
  Exercise: [Practice: 50 min]
• IMAGE, BEFORE and AFTER SCRIPT, NEEDS, ALLOW_FAILURE: [Theory - 45 min, Quizzes – 20 min]
  Exercise: [Practice: 60 min]
• Variables [Theory - 60 min, Quizzes – 25 min]
  Exercise: [Practice: 80 min]
• WHEN, RULES, ANCHORS, EXTENDS: [Theory - 45 min, Quizzes – 22 min]
  Exercise: [Practice: 80 min]

• Theory: 250 minutes
• Quizzes: 77 minutes
• Practice: 270 minutes
• Total: 597 minutes – ~10 hours.

Considering coffee breaks and solution review of the exercises the Total is 12 hours.