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Use bitrise.yml from repository

Storing the build configuration (bitrise.yml) in your repository can be a great idea. It has its own PROs and CONs of course, so you have to decide it yourself whether this solution is a good fit for your project or not.

Things to keep in mind!⚓

You can find a discussion about what are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach on GitHub. To highlight a few things to keep in mind if you'd want to store and use the bitrise.yml from your repository:

Trigger Map is better to be managed on bitrise.io⚓

You can of course store the trigger_map (or Triggers on the web UI) in your repository (in bitrise.yml), but if you do that you'll lose the ability to ignore patterns. This is because bitrise.io have to evaluate the Trigger map before the repository would be cloned in order to be able to avoid starting a build based on the Trigger map.

The source code is never stored on bitrise.io, (see Code Security - Source code for more information), so if you store the trigger map in your repository, the only way to check it is to clone it first. Even if you prepare your trigger_map in your repository to ignore patterns, bitrise.io will start a build to clone the repository, before it could abort it.

In contrast, if you specify the Trigger Map on bitrise.io, you can ignore patterns in a way that it won't even start a build.

You can't change the build configuration of a commit⚓

If you use the bitrise.yml from the repository, that means that when you rebuild a specific commit, it will use the same bitrise.yml every time, the one stored in the repository for that git commit.

The only way to change the configuration is to checkout the related branch, change the bitrise.yml, commit the changes, push and start a new build (rebuild of a commit won't work, that will always get the same bitrise.yml, the one stored at the commit).

If you store your build configuration on bitrise.io you can always rebuild any commit with a new build configuration, the configuration is not tied to the commit / state of the repository. You can simply change a parameter and hit "rebuild", the new build will use the latest configuration from bitrise.io.

You can't edit the configuration in the Workflow Editor on bitrise.io⚓

The Workflow Editor on bitrise.io can only be used to visualize and edit the configuration stored on bitrise.io.

The offline workflow editor of course can be used, so this is probably not a huge issue - and we're working on it to make it as streamlined as possible - but might make it harder to get started (as you have to install the Bitrise CLI locally).

Pull Requests can run builds with any custom configuration⚓

When someone sends a Pull Request they can modify the bitrise.yml in your repository any way they like it. A recent trend for example is to send pull requests which run a bitcoin miner, as long as that's possible. This can make your builds to queue, until you abort the related build or it hits the build time limit.

Example to use bitrise.yml from the repository⚓

There are quite a few ways to accomplish this, as all you need is:

  1. Define a "wrapper" build config on bitrise.io, which defines how and from where your bitrise.yml will be retrieved. E.g. you could store the bitrise.yml in a GitHub Gist too, not just in your repository. In this example we'll use the configuration from the repository, so the "wrapper" configuration on bitrise.io will define how the repository should be retrieved. Note: this also allows more customization, for example if the repository have to be accessed through a VPN, you can configure that in the "wrapper" config and it will work.
  2. Run the build configuration (bitrise.yml) with the Bitrise CLI. This is the same runner which runs any other build on the bitrise.io build virtual machines, so it's always preinstalled and ready to be used.

The example here is really simple to setup, should work in most cases (unless you need a VPN for cloning the repository for example), but it also requires you to maintain the Trigger Map on bitrise.io instead of in the repository, as that is the recommended solution.

Step by step:

  1. Create an app on bitrise.io, or if you already have it registered open it.
  2. Go to the Workflow tab to open the Workflow Editor.
  3. In the Workflow Editor switch to bitrise.yml mode
  4. In the bitrise.yml mode:
    • If you already have a configuration which you want to use, download the bitrise.yml first, and save it into the root of your repository. There's a button to quickly download the current bitrise.yml.
    • Once you're ready to replace your configuration on bitrise.io, copy the bitrise.yml content for bitrise.io from below and paste it into the editor on bitrise.io (in bitrise.yml mode of the editor)
  5. Save the changes.

After downloading the original bitrise.yml from bitrise.io

The original bitrise.yml you downloaded from bitrise.io most likely includes the steps to retrieve your repository. These steps will be redundant, as you will define how the repository should be accessed in the "wrapper" config on bitrise.io, so go ahead and remove the activate-ssh-key and git-clone steps from it before you would commit it into your repository.

bitrise.yml content for bitrise.io⚓

---
format_version: 1.4.0
default_step_lib_source: https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise-steplib.git

trigger_map:
- push_branch: "*"
  workflow: ci
- pull_request_target_branch: "*"
  workflow: ci

workflows:
  _run_from_repo:
    steps:
    - activate-ssh-key:
        run_if: '{{getenv "SSH_RSA_PRIVATE_KEY" | ne ""}}'
    - git-clone: {}
    - script:
        title: continue from repo
        inputs:
        - content: |-
            #!/bin/bash
            set -ex
            bitrise run "${BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID}"
  ci:
    after_run:
    - _run_from_repo

  another-workflow:
    after_run:
    - _run_from_repo

How this works:⚓

This setup splits the build configuration into two parts:

  1. The "wrapper" config on bitrise.io which defines how the repository have to be retrieved (e.g. through a Git Clone), which workflows are exposed for bitrise.io builds, and defines the automatic Trigger mapping.
  2. Your build configuration (bitrise.yml), stored in your repository, which defines what should happen during the builds.

This "wrapper" configuration defines a common workflow _run_from_repo, which will activate an SSH key (if specified), Git Clone the repository, and then switch to use the bitrise.yml from the repository by running bitrise run "${BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID}".

This common workflow (_run_from_repo) is then used through other workflows, like ci and another-workflow, using the after_run workflow chaining mechanism. Those workflows do not have any steps, the only thing the ci and another-workflow workflows do is running the common _run_from_repo workflow.

The trick is bitrise run "${BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID}". The BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID environment variable is set to the "entry" workflow, the one which started the build. So, by running the ci workflow, the bitrise run "${BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID}" command will be the same as bitrise run "ci".

This makes it super simple and quick to expose workflows from your bitrise.yml (stored in your repository) to bitrise.io, all you have to do is:

  1. Define the workflow in your bitrise.yml (in your repository).
  2. Clone the ci workflow (or the another-workflow) with a name matching the workflow in your bitrise.yml (in your repository), or create a new empty workflow with a matching name and add the _run_from_repo as an after_run workflow. Note: in the Workflow Editor UI you can quickly clone a workflow by selecting the workflow, then clicking the "add new workflow" (+) button.

Step by step usage guide of the wrapper config:⚓

For example, to add a new deploy workflow and to expose it for bitrise.io builds, once you prepared your wrapper config on bitrise.io:

  1. Create a deploy workflow in your bitrise.yml (in your repository, and don't forget to commit and push the bitrise.yml changes!)
  2. Then create a new workflow with the same name (deploy) on bitrise.io
  3. Make sure that the deploy workflow on bitrise.io has the _run_from_repo as an after_run workflow.
  4. Define Triggers for the deploy workflow on bitrise.io if you want to automate the triggering of that workflow.

Following the steps above, for example to run deploy for every code push on master you should have a configuration like this on bitrise.io:

---
format_version: 1.4.0
default_step_lib_source: https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise-steplib.git

trigger_map:
- push_branch: "master"
  workflow: deploy
- push_branch: "*"
  workflow: ci
- pull_request_target_branch: "*"
  workflow: ci

workflows:
  _run_from_repo:
    steps:
    - activate-ssh-key:
        run_if: '{{getenv "SSH_RSA_PRIVATE_KEY" | ne ""}}'
    - git-clone: {}
    - script:
        title: continue from repo
        inputs:
        - content: |-
            #!/bin/bash
            set -ex
            bitrise run "${BITRISE_TRIGGERED_WORKFLOW_ID}"
  deploy:
    after_run:
    - _run_from_repo

  ci:
    after_run:
    - _run_from_repo

  another-workflow:
    after_run:
    - _run_from_repo

This configuration will run the deploy workflow from your repository for every code push on the master branch, the ci workflow from your repository for every code push on other branches as well as for Pull Requests, and it will never run another-workflow automatically, but you will be able to start manual builds with another-workflow, which will invoke the another-workflow workflow from the bitrise.yml in your repository.