Fix: Blocked GitLab Pipelines With No Failures

Introduction

Hey guys! Today, we're diving deep into a tricky issue in GitLab where partial pipelines, even with no failed jobs, are being marked as blocked. This can be super frustrating, especially when you're relying on automated checks to give you the green light on your pull requests. We'll explore the user story, acceptance criteria, and some leads to help us get to the bottom of this. Our focus will be on understanding why this happens and, more importantly, how to fix it so that your pipelines accurately reflect their status. Accurate pipeline status is crucial for maintaining a smooth and efficient development workflow. So, let's jump in and figure out how to ensure our partial pipelines are correctly marked as successful when they should be!

User Story: The Developer's Perspective

From a developer's point of view, the goal is simple: we want to run a GitLab pipeline partially – meaning, without deploying live – and see it pass if there are no failed jobs. This is vital for several reasons. First, it allows automated checks to report the correct status in pull requests, giving us a clear indication of whether our code is ready to merge. Second, it gives us the confidence that the pipeline doesn't need our immediate attention, freeing us up to focus on other tasks. Imagine pushing a commit and then anxiously waiting to see if the pipeline passes, only to find it blocked for no apparent reason! That's the pain point we're addressing. We need to ensure that the GitLab pipeline behaves as expected, providing reliable feedback on our code changes. Ultimately, this enhances our productivity and reduces the mental overhead associated with managing our pipelines. By resolving this issue, we empower developers to work more efficiently and with greater peace of mind.

Acceptance Criteria: Defining Success

To tackle this issue effectively, we need clear acceptance criteria. These criteria act as our guide, ensuring that we're solving the problem correctly. We have two key scenarios to consider:

1. Successful Pipeline: Given a GitLab pipeline on the develop branch has been started, when all automated jobs complete with no failed jobs, then it should be marked as successful. This is the core expectation – a pipeline with no failures should be marked as a success!
2. Blocked Pipeline (with Failures): Given a GitLab pipeline on the develop branch has been started, when all automated jobs complete with some failed jobs, then it should be marked as blocked. This is the expected behavior when there are actual issues that need addressing.

These acceptance criteria are crucial because they give us a tangible way to measure our progress. We can write tests against these criteria to ensure our fix is working correctly. Testable acceptance criteria are essential for any software development project, and this is no exception. They also provide a shared understanding of what