Skip to content

Getting started

The first step is to create a GitLab project (or clone if one already exists). The project will track changes to your code, store container images, and coordinate the ci/cd pipeline.

1. Create a GitLab project

  1. Login to GitLab and navigate to the Apps group

  2. Click the [+] in the top navigation bar

  3. Click Create blank project to create a new project

  4. Give your project a name

  5. Select a group, for example "web-apps", and click the Create Project button

The LTC also has repositories on other platforms like GitHub (BCIT-LTC) and BitBucket (BCIT Bitbucket, Bitbucket.org), but GitLab is the on-premise authoritiative source.

2. Add the default deploy/ folder

  1. Clone your new project and checkout the main branch

  2. Copy the default deploy/ folder into the project root (this also contains the default .gitlab-ci.yml file).

  3. Navigate to the GitLab Settings > Repository page and expand the Push rules section.

    • Uncheck any checkmark next to the Check whether the commit author is a GitLab user.

  4. Navigate to the GitLab Settings > CI/CD page and expand the General pipelines section.

    • Uncheck "Public pipelines"
    • Add the following to the CI/CD configuration file field:
      deploy/.gitlab-ci.yml

    Click the Save changes button.

  5. Commit and push the changes

When a deploy/ folder is added to the project, GitLab is configured to trigger a pipeline; a push to the project repo triggers the pipeline, which runs jobs to check the source code version, build an app image, and deploy the image to a Kubernetes cluster.

The first time a pipeline runs, it checks to see if there are any project access tokens. When it finds that there are none, it will fail. We are in the process of creating a "token creation" pipeline that creates and stores a new tokens, but until this is finished, token creation must be done manually.

Once the project tokens are created and stored in Vault, the project is considered "initialized".

Next steps

After creating a project, browse the documentation on the following topics: