woodpecker/docs/versioned_docs/version-1.0/20-usage/90-pipeline-management.md

Advanced pipeline management

Using variables

Once your pipeline starts to grow in size, it will become important to keep it DRY ("Don't Repeat Yourself") by using variables and environment variables. Depending on your specific need, there are a number of options.

YAML extensions

As described in Advanced YAML syntax.

variables:
  - &golang_image 'golang:1.18'

 steps:
   build:
     image: *golang_image
     commands: build

Note that the golang_image alias cannot be used with string interpolation. But this is otherwise a good option for most cases.

YAML extensions (alternate form)

Another approach using YAML extensions:

variables:
  - global_env: &global_env
    - BASH_VERSION=1.2.3
    - PATH_SRC=src/
    - PATH_TEST=test/
    - FOO=something

steps:
  build:
    image: bash:${BASH_VERSION}
    directory: ${PATH_SRC}
    commands:
      - make ${FOO} -o ${PATH_TEST}
    environment: *global_env

  test:
    image: bash:${BASH_VERSION}
    commands:
      - test ${PATH_TEST}
    environment:
      - <<:*global_env
      - ADDITIONAL_LOCAL="var value"

Persisting environment data between steps

One can create a file containing environment variables, and then source it in each step that needs them.

steps:
  init:
    image: bash
    commands:
      echo "FOO=hello" >> envvars
      echo "BAR=world" >> envvars

  debug:
    image: bash
    commands:
      - source envvars
      - echo $FOO

Declaring global variables in docker-compose.yml

As described in Global environment variables, one can define global variables:

services:
  woodpecker-server:
    # ...
    environment:
      - WOODPECKER_ENVIRONMENT=first_var:value1,second_var:value2
      # ...

Note that this tightly couples the server and app configurations (where the app is a completely separate application). But this is a good option for truly global variables which should apply to all steps in all pipelines for all apps.